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Based on a wealth of documented data this book deals with loj-uul on f

Messianism. From the contents:

iKi

Hassidism Debunked

Blind belief in the tsaddik gives way to a pernicious fanatKisiii, a inlliliiiit ni ir
rantism. Mystic ecstasy is no longer distinguishable from drunkcniu' niul ihr i
docs not let anybody outdo him. He becomes an adviser in busiiu .'. and fnniily Miiah
if not impostor and fraud, healing the sick and the lame, "blessing" ihlldl
with olf-spring—all for a price... The l.ublin, Jacob Isaac llinwii/ p<ii--i;a *1 li
miracles according to a price tariff. No woman was safe in his piesen-*', In di d t ^
falling out of his window dead drunk, an event that legend luinril into a pnm hm
tor his having accused God of delaying the coming of the Messiah.

Ritual Sex

The religious rites of the Frunkists consisted of ccsiatii song, and tin. i
accompanied by wild clapping of hands, similar to the Hassidic danc‘?*. but with i '
participation and ending in an orgiastic ritual. The servivv usually began v. nh I ..inK
kneeling down and fastening two burning candles to a wooden bench, diivtng a nail !»■«"
the wood between them and pointing a cross in all directions, exclaiming
para verti, seibul grandi asserverti!” (in Ladino, the Spanish dialect ol th. Sepli^d*
Jews: ‘‘Give us the strength to see you, the great bliss to serve yon!") Mien tb iigb-.
were extinguished and pandemonium broke loose. Men and women uiuli* a'd L

‘‘to get at the truth in its nakedness" and took to copulating pell niell. with *= dv ihe
leader keeping aloof in the midst of it all.

Zionism without Zion

lie petitioned the king to assign to him a territory in caslein (lalivia whfic he
could settle with his followers in a vassal state with himself at the hcail I hr l. v, ..f :h
whole world would flock then to Poland and enrich her. In olliei wind , a /IoeU ui
without Zion, as it was advocated under the name of rcrritorlalism in the fu < •

decades of the present century, leading to variou.s projects ol si-iiliiig th- Ir u
eastern Europe in Uganda, Biro-Bidjan and other places. The plan found favi.i '• uh
both king and magnates, but floundered on strategic considciations, that b. th' ii I
of settling a group with close relations to Turkey on the riirkish bonlri

Messianic Militarism

Frank organized his following into a clandestine, highly dht Iplinrd, n*ilii i. .
"encampment," with various ranks for men and women alike, battle trainlnr uid * - nlai
nyincuvcrs. He told them they would have to take up arms befoic ion* tnd «;id. «. I
his "apostles" to spread the word: "Go to the Jew.s and tell them lie r .tdv. a , u

is coming. Train yourselves in warfare, also the women and the glib. «itid all thildi-ii
over six. As it has been said: Wejissroel osso /jflyi/--and Isiacl foimed an aiiiiy M m
nobody will perish." He saw himself already at the head of an aimy of ten m lllnn
Jews and one million gentiles, the officers acknowledging no tcliglon, dl »lu d in
red, the color of revenge. Years later, Frank’s "uhlans, hussam and cov »k " aiiinill.
wore predominantly red uniforms.

The Female Messiah

Eve Frank became a sort of counterpart to the black madonna of t • n lokliovfc

and next to the cult of Mary a cult of Eve established itself there with I fant h.iiM’’?lf

submitting to it: “For she is the true Messiah! She will save the woiM' WI"Ip i. ti
required of the Messiah to be a man or Jewish? The excnlus from I gypt wa» Inip^if^' i
because the leader was a man.”

Frankists in the U.S.

A number emigrated in 1848 to the United States, carrying the I lanklsi tia‘iiii..M
of intermarriage with them. Their most famous descendant wax thr lair hr?!-. ..*‘i
leading Zionist, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, married to Alice (nddmaik of ah'itl- i

Frankist family. His mother was a sister of Gottlieb Wchlc. I.lkr oihn Amni. o* i

Frankist descent, Brandeis considered Eva Frank a saint and had hn pniiiii* on hr
desk. Another member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Benjamin N C anh»/o. had aitHM*.,
his ancestors one of the most prominent supporters of Sabatai /cvl.

Epilog

There will always be finaglers making history. Besides, the flight fiom Ihr uh'in.
has changed by now into a flight back to ghetto mentality by Clutiuih and oihn nro

Hassidic groups with their weird, guru-like appeal to American intrlU ctiial . aldid and

abetted by the sentimental writings of Bashevis Singer and lUic Wicxcl.

Mandel The Militaii

A Peter Bergman Book

Arthur Mandel:

The Militant Messiah
or

The Flight from the Ghetto
The Story of Jacob Frank
and the Frankist Movement

At the time this book went to press, the
world was stunned by the news of the mass
suicide in Guayana which demonstrated the
power a pseudo-Messiah can have over his
followers. The subject matter of the present
study is a case in point. It throws light on
a dark corner of the eighteenth century and
offers a new view of Frankism, that strange
mixture of mystic messianism, militarism,
and sex, which originated among Polish
Jews at the beginning of the so-called
Emancipation, found a faint echo in the
French Revolution and even reached the
shores of the United States.

The rise and fall of Jacob Frank, and of
his daughter Eva and cousin Junius Frey,
was so baffling to contemporaries and
historians because in comparison all past and
present Gurus, courtesans, and political
mesmerisers seem nothing more than small
bunglers. Based on both hitherto unknown
documents and a host of Frank’s sayings
which sound like the anti-establishment and
sexual liberation slogans of today, Frankism
is set here against the background of its own
time and ours, a fascinating tale, cutting
across cherished illusions with verve and
wit.

The author dares an incidental critique
of Martin Buber’s Hassidic concept, which
is spreading generally in New Theology, that
“the same deed that would be evil com¬
mitted by an ordinary man, committed by
the tsaddik is good,” a concept that raises
the question: “What was the divine spark in
Hitler or Stalin?” It is left to the reader to
extend this question even to democratic
dissemblers in messianic pose.

About the author:

Born in that part of Austro-Silesia which
fell to Poland after World War I, Arthur
Mandel studied in Vienna and Berlin and
lived for some time in Paris and Geneva.
Since 1942 in the United States, he taught
European and American economic history at
Stanford University and the University of
California. Retired now, he turned to explor¬
ing the obscure byways of history, the
present volume being the first fruit of this
endeavour.

The portrait of Fran 9 ois Chabot, a
geomantic etching by F. Bonneville, has
been reproduced with the permission of
Bildarchiv, Oesterreichische Nationalbibli-
othek, Vienna.

Cover picture: Jacob Frank on his death bed
surrounded by his body guard.

Jacket design by Gunther Jansen

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

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The

Militant

Messiah

The Flight from the Ghetto

The Story of Jacob Frank
and the Frankist Movement

Arthur hdandel

A Peter Bergman Book
published by

Fiumanities Press

ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, NEW JERSEY 07716

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Mandel, Arthur.

The militant messiah. nproman

“A Peter Bergman book.” For information address Peter Bergm ,

Bethlehem, Connecticut 06751. , 0 -,

Bibliography and source references; pp. 174-isz.

Includes Index.

‘.'““.cob (1726-1791) ..a luni». F,=, .H.. 0 * 6 *.

(1753-1794). 2. Pseudo-Messiahs. 3. Jewish Assimilation g

I. Title. A Ai

BM755.F68M36 296.6‘1’0924 [B] 79-443

ISBN: 0-391-00973-7
Copyright © 1979 by Peter Bergman.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Page

1 The End ^

2 Childhood of a Messiah ^

3 The Polish Jews

4 Ghetto Mysticism

5 Hassidism Debunked

6 The New Messiah

7 Visions

8 End of the Law

9 Ritual Sex

10 A Puzzle to Jews and Non-Jews

11 In the Crossfire of Church and Synagogue 47

12 Back to Poland

13 Zionism Without Zion

14 The Big Step ^

15 Messianic Militarism

16 Before the Tribunal of the Inquisition 71

17 The Female Messiah 75

18 Why Bruenn? .

19 Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey

20 The Messiah in Bruenn

21 The Messiah—A Capitalist

22 Frankists in Prague and in America 99

23 The New Jerusalem

24 Goethe, Mickiewicz, Casanova 107

25 Decline

26 Moses Dobrushka, the Jacobin 121

27 Junius Frey, Grandseigneur 127

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28 Junius Frey, Philosopher of the Revolution 132

29 The Last Act 136

30 Junius Frey, the Speculator 143

31 Epilogue 149

Appendix:

The Memories of Moses Forges about the

Frankist Court in Offenbach 155

On the Intimate Letters about France 171

Bibliography and Source References 174

Index 183

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Jacob Frank
Eva Frank

Leopoldine Chabot, nee Frey
Frangois Chabot

Title page of the Intimate Letters About France
Title page of Junius Frey’s Philosophie Sociale
Eva Frank’s house in Offenbach
Frank leaving for his prayer service
Frank on his deathbed

The End

When Danton an4 his friends were beheaded, two
luothers, Junius and Emanuel Frey, were also executed
all hough they did not belong to Danton’s faction. They
had played a minor part in the trial—not enough for
Paris' newspapermen to report about them. Only the
correspondent of the Berlin Vossische Zeitung paid at-
I cut ion to the Freys because they were well known in
I he German colony in Paris. He may even have been a
visitor in their house in the rue d’Anjou, which was a
icfuge for German emigrants. He described how the
brothers crouched in the back of the large two-wheel
cart, the younger, Emanuel, crying on the shoulder of
I he older, who tried to calm him.

Behind the morose driver stood Danton, gesturing
with his fists as he had always done, trying to harangue
I he mob which lined the street. His words were drowned
out by the crowd, the same crowd who—when was it?
yesterday? yester-year?—had cheered him madly.

It could not be far to the place of execution—the cart
was already rumbling through the suburb Saint-Honore.
Now it passed through rue d’Anjou. Junius took a look at
I he windows of number 19. Was Leopoldine still there?
She had been released from prison, that much he knew,
but what had become of her? The shutters were closed
light and nothing stirred behind them.

The cart at last reached the Place de la Revolution.

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

The brothers did not have to wait long. When their
turn came, they embraced and kissed each other.
Camille Desmoulins stopped sighing for his beloved
Lucile for a moment as they were led past him, and
Danton looked at them indifferently. He had had nothing
to do with them.

It was the 14th Germinal of the year II of the one
and indivisible Republic, the 5th of April, 1794, of the
old calendar.

Who were the brothers Frey?

The trial papers tell us, although they do not agree
in every detail. Clerks did not take it too seriously then;
the accused were doomed anyhow, and the clerk put
down whatever he heard in the din without taking
pains to ask for the spelling of the foreign names. The
papers speak of the brothers as the bankers and army
suppliers Junius Gottlob (Kotlo) and Emanuel Ernest
Frey (Fraye). The executioner listed the younger under
No. 564 as Emanuel Frez, his brother. No. 565, oddly
as Junius Eschine Portock. Otherwise there is no diver¬
gence in the data. Both are called barons, living together
with their 16-year-old sister Leopoldine, alleged daughter
of Emperor Leopold II of Austria and wife of the former
Capucin monk and prominent member of the National
Assembly Fran9ois Chabot, who perished under the
guillotine with Danton and the brothers Frey. Age of
the latter: Junius 36, Emanuel 27; place of birth:
Bruenn (Brune), Moravia, “pays imphial”; domicile:
Vienna; for the last two years Paris, 19 rue d’Anjou,
Faubourg Saint-Honor6, which was also Chabot’s
address.

Childhood of a Messiah

What had brought the brothers Frey and their sister
to Paris?

The answer goes back, via several intermediary points,
to the village of Korolowka in the easternmost corner of
the Polish province of Galicia where, in the year 1726,
Rachel, the wife of Leib, an innkeeper, gave birth to
a boy who, under the name of Jacob Frank, was to
play an important, though by no means praiseworthy,
role in Jewish history as the leader of a messianic move¬
ment. He was the second cousin of the brothers Frey,
and Junius his heir apparent.

Although he himself had no desire to study, Frank
spoke of his father, not without pride, as a learned
rabbi in Czernowitz and later Bucharest; on another
occasion, however, and probably closer to the truth,
he described him as a leaseholder of some Polish land-
owner. Several years before his death, Frank revealed
to his followers a great secret, according to which he
was the son of a mighty king whose empire was seven
years beyond the sea and who left him a treasure buried
at the mouth of the Danube where it flows into the
Black Sea. This fairytale sufficed to make his followers
lill his empty pockets with gold and his creditors allow
for advances.

Frank’s mother came from a well-to-do family in

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Rzeszow, western Galicia. Frank loved her fine bed
sheets and pillowcases embroidered with gold and silver,
as well as the lace-covered shirts she used to sew while
the maidservants made bedclothes from raw linen to be
given away to poor Jewish girls as part of their dowry.

His mother told him once of a dream he had when
he was four years old, in which he saw God’s beauti¬
ful face. He was sitting on God’s knee and God gave
him a ball of golden thread saying, “Hold on, my child,
to this ball, and let it not fall out of your hand when
the time comes to unroll it.” Whether this was a true
childhood dream or a late fruit of Frank’s vivid imagina¬
tion may better be left undecided here.

Frank was very fond of his grandmother, “a well-
experienced stargazer” who protected him from the
witches who surrounded his cradle with their queen in
front. “Take good care of this child,” she is said to
have admonished his parents, “for he will bring some¬
thing new into the world.” And he goes on reminiscing
(as recorded by a disciple): “She was a truly decent
and charitable woman. When there was famine in the
country, she distributed food to the needy, Christian
and Jew alike, and nobody was turned away empty-
handed. People came to see her from far away for she
was blessed with the virtues of our ancestral mothers,
the wives of the biblical patriarchs. Half a year before
she died, she fell very sick. They rushed to her bedside
from all over because she was famous for her charity.
People assembled in the synagogue and cried and im¬
plored God for her life and well-being, and handed
out many alms. It was all in vain.”

Frank’s father was a strict man. When his children
reached the age of five, he used to seat them at the table
and teach them good manners. Whosoever did not be-

Childhood of a Messiah

liave got a spanking; the punishment was the same
for refusing to eat. He once brought a sky-blue suit
liome for his son, and when little Jacob asked him
where he got it, he said from God in heaven. But then
he put it away for the holidays. “So I took my clothes,”
Frank remembers, “and buried them in the ground and
came home all naked. And when they asked me: Where
are your clothes,’ I Said, they have been stolen from
me and now I must walk around in the nude. So they
had to give me the new suit and the white shirt they
had made for me to wear on the holidays, and I paraded
in them all over town.”

There was also an uncle in the house. “I used to
crawl into his bed and would not leave him alone until
lie joined me in saying good night to everybody, even
the mice, big and small, as well as to the snakes and
all the animals in the forest, including the birds; to all
and everyone I said good night.”

The Polish Jews

These were not good nights for the Polish Jews.
Polish statehood was disintegrating, and the Federa¬
tion of Jewish Communities, the so-called Synod of
the Four Provinces, with it. This body, established in
the sixteenth century for the collection of the Jewish
head tax, had developed over time into an autonomous
organism with judicial, fiscal, religious, educational,
and even some penal prerogatives, a veritable state

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

within the state. By the end of the seventeenth cen¬
tury, however, it was only a shadow of its former self.
In addition to being torn apart by intrigue and corrup¬
tion, a faithful copy of the Polish diet, the Sejm, it was
burdened by heavy debts to the Catholic church,
mainly to the Jesuits, whose total assets in 1773, at the
time the order was dissolved, consisted of lou’s from
the Jewish communities bearing 30 percent a year.

The indebtedness of the Jewish communities re¬
sulted from the general impoverishment of Polish
Jewry dating back to the devastating revolts of the
Ukrainian peasants during the seventeenth century,
especially those under the command of the Cossak
hetman Chmielnitsky. In the wake of Poland’s ex¬
pansion to the East, the Jews arrived in the Ukraine as
tenants, publicans, and tax collectors of the Polish
overlords who entrusted them not only with the man¬
agement of their domains, but even with the collection
of church taxes. Thus it was not unusual for the Jew
to post himself Sundays at the church door and collect
an “admission fee.” The keys to the church were also
in his custody, and no baptism, wedding or funeral
could take place without his handing them over—of
course, against payment of the customary dues. Little
did it matter that he acted on behalf of his Polish
master, who received the lion’s share. The Jews were
first and foremost to feel the brunt of the revolts. They
were massacred by the thousands (100,000 in 1648
alone) and 300 Jewish communities went up in fire,
the biggest holocaust before Hitler.

The turmoil that followed (interior factionalism,
decay of the towns, Swedish and Russian invasions)
certainly did not help the situation. By way of “comfort”
to their suffering people, Jewish officialdom had only

The Polish Jews

to offer heavier taxation and the old tune that God
had punished them for their sins; in other words, they
should blame themselves for what had happened. Be¬
sides adding insult to injury, this only heightened the
desire for salvation. Preachers and prophets appeared,
heralding the imminent coming of the Messiah.

Then, spreading like a hurricane through the Jewish
world, the news carne of his arrival in 1665, in the
city of Smyrna way down in Turkey, under the name of
Sabbatai Zevi. Why, was he not, as predicted, born on
the anniversary day of the destruction of Jerusalem and
had he not done the abominable and pronounced the
name of God without having been swallowed up by
the earth? The Jews of Europe from as far away as
Amsterdam and Hamburg were caught in a wild frenzy;
many sold off their houses, packed their belongings, and
took to the road to join the Messiah—only to run head-
on into the frightful news of his conversion to Islam!
Imprisoned by the suspicious Sultan, he had been hold¬
ing court in jail and receiving delegations from all over
Europe until he was given the choice: conversion or
death. He chose life, and his companions with him. The
initial disappointment, far from being the end of Sabbatai
Zevi’s adventure, turned quickly into a renewed and
more obstinate faith. Had they not been told time and
again of the Messiah’s sufferings, his birth pangs? Of
the strange things he would have to do in order to
bring salvation? Of the necessity of his descent into the
abyss of sin and his passing through the 49 gates of '
abomination? Just as the “scandal” of the crucifixion
became the symbol of salvation in the eyes of Christ’s
disciples, so the followers of Sabbatai Zevi accepted
the apostasy of their master as only one more proof of
his veracity; and even his death, far from robbing

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

them of their belief, only made them look forward
faithfully to his second coming.

Excommunicated and persecuted by the rabbis who
felt threatened in their positions, the heretics went
underground, often under the guidance of outstanding
personalities such as the much-maligned rabbi of Prague
and later Hamburg, Jonathan Eibenschuetz (1690-
1764), who escaped excommunication only by joining
the signers of the ban (which was also signed by Aaron
Baer Wehle, a leading Sabbataian and prominent
member of the Prague Jewish community). Scattered
all over Europe, the heretics kept in touch with each
other, published a vast array of writings, and seemed
only to wait for a renewed call to break camp. From
their ranks came the many messianic prophets and
“balshems” (from the Hebrew baal hashem, master of
the divine name) who roamed the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Most popular among them were
Mortke Eisenstadt, Haskel Wormser, Moshe Kamionker,
and particularly Yidl Hassid and Haim Malakh who,
at the head of 1,200 white-clad penitents, wailing and
weeping Jewish flagellantes, made, in 1700, their way
from Poland via Austria and Italy to the Holy Land.
Failure and disappointment notwithstanding, they always
found numerous believers. Here, apparently, was an in¬
exhaustible source for messianism to draw on and only
a charismatic leader was needed to kindle the flame
anew. He arose, not in one, but in two men; and
although the popular movements they initiated were quite
different in character—disdain for the world and escape
into the realm of the soul in one, world hatred and
destructive nihilism in the other—they were only two
sides of the same coin, two different ways of reacting
to the same cause, two veritable grass-root revolts

Ghetto Mysticism

against the oppressive, petrified rule of the rabbis, with
many affinities and a similar end.

Ghetto Mysticism

Has'sidism and Frankism, the two movements which
deeply disturbed European Jewry during the eighteenth
century and beyond, belong to the long chain of heretic
sects that goes back to the early Christians and the
Gnostics. The founders of both came from that remote
corner of eastern Europe, the forest and mountain
country of eastern Galicia and the adjoining Ukraine
which saw the last offsprings of gnostic Manicheism
and the Bogomils.

The founder of Hassidism (from the Hebrew hassid,
pious) was Israel Balshem (1700-1760), called Bal-
shem Tov, the good balshem, in distinction to the
many other balshems, among them even one in London.
Israel was a simple Jew and tavern keeper, a dreamer
who liked to roam through fields and forests, watch the
clouds, and listen to the wind. In the year 1736 he
is said to have had an illumination when “a little
peasant” in the woods showed him the “religion of
love,” which was probably the “religion of love” of the
Khlyste, a mystic sect of Russian, Ukrainian, and even
Polish peasantry that existed into the late nineteenth
century. Jacob Frank (1726-1791), he too an un¬
educated man, also knew the Khlyste, and their orgiastic
rites could hardly have escaped his attention. Despite

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

these coincidences, no conclusions should be drawn
concerning mutual influences. Contrary to the Jewish
sects, the Khlyste had a negative attitude towards life;
they abstained from meat and intoxicating beverages,
kept long fasting periods, and chastised and castigated
themselves (their name comes from the Russian khlyst,
whip). If they are mentioned occasionally on the follow¬
ing pages, it is not for the sake of establishing correla¬
tions, but to show that different soils may bring forth
similar flowers. Any similarity is strictly coincidental,
that is, not the result of historical causality or inter¬
dependence, but rather (to borrow from Jungian ter¬
minology) a case of synchronicity, an independent
parallelism of development, in this instance the unfolding
of a certain process common to all established churches
of the time. And the time was one of overall ferment
and restiveness, a fertile ground for sectarianism in East
and West alike. Some scholars even thought to discover
in Hassidism traces of English Pietism and Mongolian
Buddhism, while others regarded the Russian sects as
a sort of Christian Hassidism. Be that as it may, whether
Russian Khlyste, German Hupfer, English Jumpers, or
American Shakers, they show some striking similarities
with those wretched Jews of the god-forsaken hamlets
in eastern Galicia both in the spiritual and formal
sense. What they all have in common is the dissatisfac¬
tion, if not open disgust, with the empty formalism of
institutionalized religion, coupled with the perennial
longing for a personal communion with God, the unio
mystica, frustrated time and time again by the churches
and clergies of all brands and denominations.

The Balshem proclaimed that God can be reached
by anybody, no learned rabbi is needed. God is omni¬
present, not only in the synagogue at the determined

Ghetto Mysticism

hours of prayer, but even in such unorthodox places as
an open meadow or deep in the woods. He wants to
be served not in sadness, penitence, and mortification
of the body, but in joyful song and dance; not just by
word of mouth, but by anything one does: walking,
eating, working, making love; in short, with every part,
movement and functjon of the body. Hence the noisy
prayers of the Hassidim, their ecstatic outcries and
clapping hands, their shaking and twisting bodies, their
suddenly jumping off the ground while praying, their
bendihg and swaying “like trees in the wind,” totally
oblivious to what is going on around them. It was only
perfect logic, in the light of such ideas, for a Hassid
once to defend himself against the reproach of impiety;
“Chewing tobacco or emptying my bowels is more
meaningful than all your prayers.” Salomon Maimon
(1753-1800), who took the jump from Hassidism to
Kantian philosophy, described in his Autobiography how
the Hassidim, “not unlike the Greek cynics, violated all
laws of good behavior, ran around naked in the streets,
relieved themselves in the presence of others and the
like. ... Some even became insane and believed they
did not exist at all.”

Even sin may be turned into a service to God, for
there is no evil as such; sin is “the throne of the good”
and contains one of those divine sparks which fell
down into the depths from the work of creation; and
whoever raises it by “entering and smashing the shells
that imprison it,” is the truly righteous one of his time,
the tsaddik. Anybody can do it and many are called
upon, but few are chosen.

For the tsaddik is the mainstay and pillar of the
world. And if the world has not perished yet, we owe
it to him. The tsaddik has superhuman powers at his

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

command, he can be in two places at the same time,
has access to heaven where (as the Balshem told of
himself) he converses with the Messiah and the ancestors,
pleads the case of his people, remonstrates with, and
may even summon, God to court as a witness or
defendant! Arguing with God is an old Jewish habit,
starting with the patriarchs (Jacob’s by-name is Israel:
he who wrestled with God) and going on to Moses,
the prophets, and so forth. When Nahman of Horodenko
emigrated, in 1764, to Palestine with his community,
their ship was caught in a storm. The tsaddik asked the
men to put on their shrouds and prayer shawls and to
assemble on deck, and thus turned to God: “If the
heavenly tribunal has decided our doom, I, in the name
of this holy community, appeal this decision and ask
it be rescinded!” The sea, so the story goes, calmed
down immediately.

Reprimanding God puts the tsaddik obviously in
great jeopardy. He takes the danger upon himself out
of love for his people, whose absolute faith is his only
protection. He often has to use the weirdest means,
such as disguising himself as a peasant, thief, or robber
and even committing the forbidden in order to unite
with the transgressor and keep him from sinning.

The slightest doubt by any of his followers may be the
tsaddik’s doom and prevent him from ever finding the
way back to himself. One owes him, therefore, absolute
obedience, for whatever he does is good, whether it
looks so or not. To the historian of religion this may
sound like talking about the wide-spread medieval sect
of the “Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit,” who
considered themselves to be one in God and above good
and evil like the thirteenth-century German mystic Mas¬
ter Eckhart to whom God and man were essentially

Ghetto Mysticism

equal, a view which, after his death, was condemned as
heretical.

In Hassidism the concepts of good and evil undergo
a certain qualification. They no longer are determined
by the deed itself, but depend on the doer. The same
deed that would be evil committed by an ordinary man,
committed by the tsaddik is good. For the tsaddik is
holy and what he does, says, touches is holy. Even to
speak of him is holy and equal to prayer. Decisive is not
the What but the How or, in the words of Martin Buber,
“not the given action, but the dedication of all action....
There is no definite, exhibitable, teachable action, but
the hallowing of all actions without distinction. Each
action can be the one on which all depends; what is
decisive is only the strength and concentration of hallow¬
ing with which I do it. . . . For all that man does he
shall do with his whole being.” Certainly, Buber con¬
cedes, “the man who has to do with evil in this manner
runs a great risk,” but he is protected by the circum¬
stance that “sin is just that which by its nature cannot
be done with the whole being.”

This was written in the 1920’s. Today we know better.
What was the divine spark in Hitler or Stalin? Evil
may, and good need not necessarily, be done “with
one’s whole being.” After all, the human condition is
not so much the dilemma between right and wrong as
that of right against right. And there is often no way
out of it.

Hassidism, although frequently called a sect, was a
popular movement. It had won over most of eastern
Europe’s Jews by the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Balshem did not teach esoteric ideas for the few
or advocate a secret brotherhood with hair-raising initia¬
tion rites or introduce unintelligible symbolism. He

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

brought religion down to earth and taught a mysticism
to be lived by everybody, easy to grasp and fitted to the
psychic needs of the little man who, poor and un¬
educated as he was, saw himself suddenly placed above
the rabbis and their scholarly arrogance. No obstruse
casuistry here, no bone-dry, hairsplitting exegesis; but
parables and folktales, songs and tunes, not in the
unintelligible, though sacred Hebrew, but in the vernac¬
ular Yiddish, “the language of the kitchen maids,”
which was now fit for reciting the prayers. And
enthroned above it all—the holy tsaddik, the man of
God.

Hassidism Debunked

It is here, in its very heart, that Hassidism carried
the germ of doom. Once more an intermediary arises
between man and God. The road to salvation passes
through the tsaddik. Only his devotees find grace in
the eyes of God, only he who is devoted to the tsaddik
is devoted to God. From popularization to vulgarization
is but one step. Contempt for the study of the scriptures
turns into contempt for any study whatsoever, par¬
ticularly the secular sciences, but also for the Jewish
philosophers of the Middle Ages like Maimonides “who
built upon what Aristotle, damned be his name, spat
out.” (Maimonides was and still is the perennial target
of Jewish orthodoxy; his Guide of the Perplexed was

Hassidism Debunked

the first book to be burned by the early Inquisition,
and that at the request of the rabbis of Montpellier in
1232.) Blind belief in the tsaddik gives way to a per¬
nicious fanaticism, a militant obscurantism. Mystic
ecstasy is no longer distinguishable from drunkenness,
and the tsaddik does not let anybody outdo him. He
becomes an adviser in business and family affairs, if
not impostor and fraud, healing the sick and the lame,
“blessing” childless couples with off-spring—all for a
price. This erosion of the role of the tsaddik was not
an isolated or late phenomenon. Thus the tsaddik Eli-
melekh of Lezaisk (died 1786) likened his position be¬
tween God and man to that of an intermediary between
seller and buyer and charged a brokerage fee for his
services. And that “luminary” of Hassidism, the tsaddik of
Lublin, Jacob Isaac Hurwicz, performed his miracles
according to a price tariff. No woman was safe in his
presence; he died in 1815 by falling out of his window
dead drunk, an event that legend turned into a punish¬
ment for his having accused God of delaying the coming
of the Messiah. What Buber saw in Hassidism applies
to the time of the Balshem at best, and only with
reservations. After all, the Balshem was, like the other
balshems, a fortune teller, healer, and exorcizer whose
main income came from the sale of amulets for the
protection of women in childbed and which were so
much in demand that he employed two men for their
manufacture. Thus the populace saw him, thus his disci¬
ples saw him, and thus surely he saw himself.

What came afterwards, and it came surprisingly fast,
was what inevitably had to come. Every aberration,
every degeneration of Hassidism was contained in its
very origin (as even Buber admitted). Jews may be
as prone to mysticism as other people are, but there

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

is an old rationalistic residual in their way of thinking
which puts a sceptical, if not ironical, damper on their
relation to God and on mystical exaltation in general.
Nothing illustrates this better than the following anec¬
dote reported by the Talmud: The rabbis were once
arguing about some point of law when a voice was
heard from heaven taking sides with one of them;
thereupon another turned around and shouted: “Quiet
up there! Here we decide by majority vote!” Or that
popular story of the old Jew who had kept the com¬
mandments scrupulously all his life and then said on his
deathbed: “Would be funny if there were nothing over
there either.” What goes by the name of Jewish mystic¬
ism is not so much a search for God, as for the hidden
meaning of the Holy Scriptures, and that is essentially
the history of the Hebrew people. This is what the
Cabbala is after, and Hassidism is her legitimate child.
Not the story of a people, but the passion of a man, the
New Testament could give rise to the intimate confes¬
sions of the great Christian mystics. Christian mysticism
is unhistoric, Jewish mysticism impersonal and not con¬
ducive to a personal outpouring of the soul. God, the
all-creator, is too remote to allow for more than ex¬
uberant admiration of his awesome majesty. A religion
without myths or mythology, a deity which, according
to the Jewish credo, cannot be imagined or experienced
in any way (hence not the hidden God of mystic-
gnostic lore, the deus absconditus) but a God who
cannot communicate with man (Spinoza’s substance )—
to be sure, this does not preclude mysticism altogether,
but lends itself equally well to agnosticism or atheism.

What happened to the Balshem was only what had
happened to many a prophet before him. Like most
of them, he has left no writings of his own. The stories

Hassidism Debunked

he told on his walks through the fields or in the dark¬
ness of his little room and which are a true match for
the Fioretti of St. Francis of Assisi, were written down
after his death by his disciples, who added some of
their own and put them into the mouth of the master.
As time went on, these tales grew in volume. How¬
ever, as long as the Balshem was alive, everything
seemed idyllic and free of coercion. But already his
immediate successor, the “Great Maggid” (preacher)
DoV Baer of Mesritch (died 1772) put the movement
into a straightjacket. Unlike the Balshem who travelled
from place to place to see the people, the Maggid
established a permanent residence and made it the holy
duty of every Hassid to come to see him at least once a
year, bearing gifts. He also introduced the hereditary
succession; for holy as the tsaddik, so is his son and
even grandson (which gave rise to the accession of sev¬
eral baby-tsaddiks, not unlike the Tibetan baby Dalai-
Lamas). The Balshem’s only son was feeble-minded; in
his stead, one of his grandsons by his daughter became
a tsaddik, greedy and pleasure-seeking, with an ostenta¬
tious household, magnificent coach, brassband, and even
court jester. The “Great Maggid,” blessed with seven
sons, crowned them all tsaddik, whereupon they
promptly took to competing with each other, not always
in irreproachable ways. With Israel Friedmann, the
Maggid’s grandson and founder of the notorious dynasty
of Sadagora, we are already way down the road of the
dark men of Hassidism with their princely courts, lux¬
urious lifestyles and bejeweled women.

There are many sayings of the Balshem and his
disciples that fit Buber’s philosophy of mystic existen¬
tialism quite well; others do not at all. By concen¬
trating on the former and underestimating, if not over-

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

looking, the dark side of Hassidism, Buber arrived at
an idealized, retouched picture, just as if one tried to
interpret Christianity in the light of the beautiful—but
only the beautiful—logia of Jesus Christ, omitting his
curses and damnations, let alone the dogmatic intoler¬
ance of the Church. To the adherents of contemporary
Hassidism, so far as they ever heard of him, Buber
was an “apikoires” (bowdlerized from Epicurean), a
blasphemer, and Buber seemed to be aware of it when
he said he “carried the message Hassidism did not want
to be, but was and is, into the world against its will.”

Hassidism encountered the immediate opposition of
official Judaism, especially that of the greatest rab¬
binical authority of the time, the Gaon (scholarprince)
Elia of Vilna (at whose funeral in 1797 the Hassidim
danced for joy.) Denounced by their opponents
(Missnagdim in Hebrew) as heretics and believers in
Sabbatai Zevi, the Hassidim were repeatedly excom¬
municated. In the struggle that followed, the two sides
were not too choosy in their means, not excluding book
burning and physical force. Before long, however, the
axe was buried and the two enemy brothers hurled
themselves upon a third one, the Enlightenment coming
from the West and slowly making its way into the ghetto.
And here they did not even shrink from murder, witness
the poisoning of the rabbi Dr. Abraham Kohn by the
Hassidim of Lemberg in 1848.

Subsequently the conflict between Hassidim and
Missnagdim simmered down to a reconciliation starting
with the rehabilitation of the scriptural studies by the
tsaddik of Ladi, Shneyer Salmen (died 1812) who,
denounced by his enemies, still had to spend some
time in Russian prisons. He succeeded afterwards in
legalizing the “Sect of the Hassidim” with the Tsarist

Hassidism Debunked

government, probably in reward for the services he
rendered them during the Napoleonic war, (Only a
last minute getaway saved him from falling into the
hands of the French.) What a paradox: the tsaddik
allied with the Tsar who oppressed the Jews, against
Napoleon who brought them their freedom wherever
he went.

Spying and informing on Socialists and Zionists alike
have ever since remained trademarks of Hassidism, and
the tsaddiks, with few exceptions, were con men of the
Russian and Austrian, later Polish and Rumanian, po¬
lice. One of these exceptions was Nahman of Bratslav,
the great-grandson of the Balshem and, next to him,
the most outstanding personality of Hassidism. He
attacked the tsaddiks (“devil’s henchmen,” he called
them) for their corrupt way of life and their venality,
arousing only fury and hatred. An inflammatory cam¬
paign was unleashed against him in the course of which
his house was burned down and he himself almost
killed. Broken in body and spirit and chased from town
to town, he died in Uman in 1811 at the age of 38.
Yet, even this most pathetic figure turned fanatic when
it came to fighting the hated Enlightenment. His “noble
character” was of some questionable nature, besides.
Thus, when he decided to travel to Palestine and his
wife asked him what she was to live on while he was
away, he answered: “You will move to your father’s,
your older sister will hire herself out as a servant, the
younger one will be taken in by somebody else, your
mother will find work as a cook, and I will sell all we
have to pay for the trip.” More will be said later about
the astonishing similarities between this radical repre¬
sentative of a refined Hassidism and Jacob Frank, the
prophet of an equally radical materialism.

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Mention should be made in this connection of such
prominent Hassidim as Moshe Friedmann, son of the
above mentioned tsaddik of Sadagora, who turned his
back on Hassidism and joined the Enlightenment at
the risk of his life; the son of the tsaddik of Ladi, who
turned his back on Judaism and became a Catholic
convert; and Mendel of Kotsk, probably the most po¬
pular tsaddik of his time, who turned his back on God
and became an atheist, only to be imprisoned in a cage
by his followers for the remaining twenty years of his
life.

To the non-Jewish world Hassidism remained terra
incognita into the 1920’s; Poland, the Balshem’s home¬
land, no exception. Dwelling together for centuries
and rubbing shoulders every day, Poles and Jews knew
next to nothing of each other. They lived in different
worlds and spoke different languages. This mutual igno¬
rance lasted as long as there were Jews in Poland. If
there was a growing number of Jews who spoke Polish,
there were hardly any Poles who spoke Yiddish (or
jargon, as they liked to say derogatorily). In vain were
the efforts of such prominent writers as Julian Niemce-
wicz and Eliza Orzeszko to break down the barriers of
hatred and contempt. To the Pole, the Jew was by and
large a cheat and fanatic when poor, a boaster and
braggart when rich, a scabby, evil-smelling garlic eater
in any case. To the Jew, the Pole was more animal
than man when poor, an arrogant nincompoop unable
to handle his own affairs when rich, a chronic drunk
in any case. When it came to Hassidism, even Eliza
Orzeszko identified it with orthodox Judaism tout court
(however, by the time she did so, in 1882, she was no
longer off the mark) and the Balshem was to her just
another of those “half savage” rabbis.

The New Messiah

On the whole, prewar Polish literature was, if not
indifferent or hostile, critical-tutorial toward the Jews,
of a well meaning, yet impotent do-goodism that did
no harm. Hassidism drew a complete blank and found
refuge only in the works of one single writer, Stanis-
law Vincenz, who, without criticizing or moralizing,
accepted it as it was and included some beautiful Has-
sidic legends in his stories of the Carpathian highlanders.

Today, with no Jews left in eastern Europe, what
has remained of Hassidism except the somewhat ques¬
tionable groups in Jerusalem, western Europe and the
United States? Perhaps the “singing rebbe” Shlomo
Carlebach with his electric guitar? Books remain. Books
by such Yiddish and Hebrew writers as Agnon and An-
ski (author of the Dibbuk), J. L. Perez and M. J.
Bin-Gorion, and most of all the Tales of the Hassidim
by Martin Buber, a monument aere perennius to the
vitality and creative power Hassidism once was.

The New Messiah

This was the world into which the child Jacob was
born—he who could not sleep without telling the mice
good night and who was to become the Balshem’s
antipode. It is highly improbable that the two men
ever came to see each other. Hassidic tradition has it
that the Balshem participated in a church-organized dis¬
putation between rabbis and Frankists “because he spoke
Polish.” The official record, however, does not mention

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

him. Anyhow, the rabbis would not have called on the
assistance of an excommunicated person who was not
even a rabbi, and the reconciliation between Missnagdim
and Hassidim came only long after the Balshem’s death.
The rabbis were ignorant of the Polish language, and
their speaker was the wealthy wine merchant Baer
Bolekhover, not the Balshem. Speaker for the other side
was the Polish adventurer Anton Kossakowski-Molivda
who had been active among Russian peasant sects; once
friend and adviser to Frank, he later became his accuser
before the Warsaw Inquisition. Frank arrived only
towards the end of the disputation (which took place in
Lemberg, from July to September, 1759) and was too
busy preparing, or rather delaying, his baptism to actively
take part in the proceedings. Be that as it may, the two
protagonists must have heard of each other. Neither
mentions his counterpart, but the Balshem is said to have
died broken-hearted at the news of Frank’s conversion
to Catholicism. Although the two dates are not far apart
—November 1759 and May 1760—the story may be
taken as a pious mystification to emphasize the noble
mind of the Balshem and to blame the renegades for
his death.

Frank was the very opposite of the Balshem in char¬
acter as well: not a quiet, introverted child, but an
unruly boy of unusual strength, the terror of the town.
He relished telling of his youthful doings, which ranged
from more or less harmless rnischief in the synagogue
to serious robberies and holdups. One night he went
from house to house banging a wooden hammer twice
against each door, the customary signal of a death in
town. Everybody came running out into the street in
their nightgowns shouting. Who has died? At the age
of twelve he commanded a gang of a hundred boys.

The New Messiah

Jewish and non-Jewish, who hijacked travellers, threw
sand into their eyes, and robbed them of their last shirt.

The unsteady life of the family may have had some¬
thing to do with it. A follower of Sabbatai Zevi, Frank’s
father was forced to move from place to place, settling
finally in Bucharest which then belonged to Turkey. He
gave his 13-year-old in apprenticeship to a spice mer¬
chant, much to the youngster’s dislike. Soon the boy
had a gang of teenagers at his command, fighting bloody
battles with other gangs and terrorizing the neighbor¬
hood. An extortion attempt landed him in jail, and
only the intervention of “a noble lady” helped him out
of it. Back it went to the spice shop, but not for long.
Trying it on his own, he dealt not in spices, but in silk
and jewels, a trade which took him, during the next few
years, as far as Smyrna. He bragged about his luck with
women, who were not only his best customers, but who
also favored him in other ways—allegedly thanks to a
magic stone in his possession which made him irre¬
sistible. A less magical explanation may be found in his
manliness and animal strength, underscored by his
pockmarked face. The sexual element later played a
dominant role in the rites of his sect. Next to women,
Frank’s passion was horses. He was an excellent horse¬
man and once crossed the swollen rapids of the Dniester
river on horseback to the astonishment of a crowd of
onlookers.

Smyrna became the turning point of his life. Under
the guidance of a certain rabbi Issakhar he plunged
into the mysteries of the Cabbala, soon acquiring the
reputation of a Cabbalist, although by his own admis¬
sion he understood little of it. A small following gathered
around him, led by his steady companions Mortke of
Prague, Nahman of Poland, and the “blind Nossen.”

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Upon learning from his teacher that the call of God was
to reach the Messiah in Salonica, he decided to go there
and become a servant to God’s yet to be chosen emis¬
sary:

“I want to serve him with all my heart. If he needs
wood, I shall cut wood for him. If he wants me to
fetch water. I shall do it. If he needs somebody to fight
his wars, I shall put myself at the head of his hosts.

Salonica was the refuge for many Jews fleeing Poland
and other parts of Europe. They were called Franks by
their Turkish coreligionists, and so our hero came to be
called “Jacob the Frank”, and later, back in Poland,
simply Jacob Frank. Frank or Frenk was a generic
name for European in the Near East, going back to the
time of the Crusades and the predominantly Frankish
Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099-1199. Strangely enough,
the oriental immigrants in modern Israel are called
Frenks, probably because so many of them speak French,
having been educated in the schools the Allicince Israelite
Universelle established for the dissemination of the
French language among the, Jews of North Africa and
the Near East.

Salonica was the seat of the Messiah according to the
Doenme (Turkish for apostates), those followers of
Sabbatai Zevi who, together with him, had been con¬
verted to Islam without renouncing their Judaism, some¬
what like the Spanish Marranos or pseudo-Christians,
many of whom had found a hdven in Turkey. The rites
of the Doenme (some of whom, we are told, survive in
present-day Turkey) culminated in orgiastic dances to
the singing of the biblical Song of Songs. They believed
in the immortality and pre-existence of the Messiah (in
Jewish lore he existed even before the creation of the
world); summoned by God, he appeared on earth in the

The New Messiah

persons of Moses, Jesus Christ, and Sabbatai Zevi. Frank
reached Salonica in 1753; he familiarized himself with
the teachings of the Doenme and decided to proclaim
himself Messiah. He betook himself to the main
synagogue of Salonica and announced he was the rein¬
carnation of Sabbatai Zevi. The latter, he said, had been
unable to accomplish his mission because he did not
taste “the sweetness of power.” Still in Smyrna, Frank
once had asked his mentor, Rabbi Issakhar, why Sab¬
batai Zevi had to die; he was told that “Sabbatai had
come to taste everything, even the bitterness of death.”
Whereupon Frank queried, “Why then did he not taste
the sweetness of power?”

Visions

A true visionary, Frank had visions, first on Novem¬
ber 20, 1754:

Riiah Hakodesh (Hebrew, the holy ghost) de¬
scended on me and I heard a voice calling, “Go and
get me the wise Jacob, and as soon as he enters the
first room, all doors shall open before him!” Two
maidens, the fairest there are, took me under my
arms and fiew me through space toward the rooms.

In some of them there were women and maidens;
in others, teachers and pupils, and I had only to
hear one word in order to understand everything.

In the last room there was the First One (Sabbatai
Zevi) in the midst of his disciples, wearing Frank-

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

ish clothes. He said to me: ‘‘Are you the wise
Jacob? I have heard of you, of your courage and
strength of mind. I made it up to here, but I am
too weak to continue. If you care, gird your loins
and may God help you! Quite a few have tried it
and have broken down under the burden.” He
pointed through the window to a dark abyss that
looked like the Black Sea and a mountain beyond it
which reached into the sky. And I exclaimed, “Well
then, I shall go! So help me God!”

This was easier said than done. He proclaimed him¬
self Messiah and Santo Senor, but somehow the spark
did not catch fire this time. First of all, the new Mes¬
siah was not well to do; messiahs seldom are. Second,
he had just married the beautiful, but poor, Hanna.
His arrogant behavior in the synagogue irked the people;
the next time he was thrown out into the street and
greeted there with not only mud and rocks, but worse,
with laughter and derision. Frank never forgot the abuse
he suffered in Salonica and kept complaining about it
for years; he felt like a jeweler displaying a very
precious stone with nobody around to appreciate it.
“Laugh your mouth full,” he scolded his scoffers, “but
let me tell you, there will be more Jews following me
than you have hair on your heads!” Yet, matters grew
worse. He was ejected from his lodgings, had to sleep in
the open and even beg for food, “but I took it upon me
for the love of God.” Finally he fell ill with boils all
over his body; by then he was definitely sick and tired
of the Messiah career and wanted to go back to the
jewel trade, to the great dismay of the trio Mortke-
Nahman-Nossen: “What? That’s what you want? Making
money? This is not your way!” He gave in, but Salonica
was no longer an abode for him. His health had im¬

Visions

proved somewhat, but his reputation was gone. And so he
decided, upon the advice of his friends, to go to Poland
where great numbers of Sabbataians lived in expectation
of their Messiah’s return. Later he presented this deci¬
sion as the result of a series of visions in which the
prophet Elia and Jesus Christ ordered him to Poland.
He did not obey at first: Why Poland when he was
doing fairly well in Smyrna? Thereupon he fell sick
again and saw in his fever dream a gray-bearded man
telling him, “You will get well in Poland; here you will
die.” He brushed the apparition aside, but his fever
rose; his condition grew worse until he lost his voice
and cOuld not move. They held some down to his nose
to see whether he was breathing, then closed his eyes
as if he had died. Let him tell in his own words what
followed next:

I saw a beautiful bearded man before me who
told me to go to Poland. I turned toward the wall,
but there on the wall he stood again and I became
terribly scared. He took me by the hand, where one
feels the pulse, and told me to rise. I tore loose and
threw myself around, but there, in the middle of
the room, he stood again, all nude, with outstretched
arms and open wounds on his hands and feet. I
jumped out of my bed and fell to my knees before
him. But he said, “I have sent you Elia twice, but
you did not listen. So I came myself. Do not fearl
You will go to Poland.” I answered, “How can I
go to Poland without even speaking their language?

I have my bread here and a young wife who will
not go with me.” But he said, “You go first, she
will follow later. I am going to give you a sign by
which you will recognize the believers in the true
faith. Whenever the going gets rough, I shall send
you Elia.” With these words he disappeared and I
have never seen him again. The people around me

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

had not seen or heard anything of this. When I
jumped Out of my bed and fell to my knees, they
had run away, scared stiff, and were now staring
into the room from outside. But I got up and ate and
drank as if nothing had happened, and was well
ever since.

Off to Poland! He left his wife in the care of her
parents in Nicopol (today Bulgaria) where she bore him
a daughter, Eve, or Avatcha as he liked to call her. It
was also in Nicopol that he almost fell victim to a
cutthroat, hired by Turkish Jews, who inflicted some
wounds on his head and chest. At long last, on Decem¬
ber 5, 1755, he crossed the border. In the distance, on
the other side of the river, one could see the Polish
guards, who did not let anybody pass. “There appeared
to me,” Frank reminisces, “the prophet Elia, exactly the
way I had seen him in my dreams, gray beard and white
coat, saying, ‘Go on and fear not!’ The coachman had
not noticed anything and hesitated as we approached
the guards, so I told him, ‘Go on and fear not!’ And we
passed unmolested; and when we arrived at the village,
the innkeeper could not stop wondering how we could
have made it.”

Thus Frank arrived at his birthplace, Korolowka,
and put up at his uncle’s. His uncle’s wife took offense
at his strange ways, his un-Jewish way of praying, his
eating “Christian” food, and the like. But she changed
her mind when she heard him telling of the purpose
of his coming: “If you knew why I came to Poland,
you would wet the earth with your tears. I say to
you, there will be lords and princes coming and wait¬
ing for days at my door to see me. What will happen
afterwards, however, I cannot tell you yet.”

A number of people joined him immediately. He

End of the Law

tliought he saw an aura around their heads and real¬
ized this was the promised sign. A group of wealthy
.lews from Leimberg was refused admission because they
did not have it. The news of his coming spread rapidly
and he was greeted everywhere with open arms, even
by rabbis and notables. His main followers, however,
were the poor and destitute, who recognized in him one
of their own who, far from hiding his origins, took
pride in calling himself a “prostak,” or rude fellow: “If
a learned man were needed, God would have sent one.”

Actually a number of Polish gentlemen showed up
with their ladies, curious to see the Jewish Messiah,
lie did not disappoint them and performed some “mira¬
cles,” like catching a pickpocket who put his hand into
1-rank’s coat and could no longer withdraw it. Or re¬
moving the huge pillory to which thieves and harlots
were tied for a lashing; three men could not move it
from place, yet he did it all by himself and crossed the
river on it (a miracle which is also reported to have
been performed by the Balshem and other tsaddiks on
I heir coats, scarves, and similar “means of transporta¬
tion,” later a favored theme for satirical folk songs).

End of the Law

Frank has been called a false Messiah a la Sabbatai
Zevi, and Frankism—pseudo-messianism. Vulgar mes-
sianism would be more to the point. In Hassidism the
messianic idea is pushed into the background by the

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

mystical longing for individual salvation to such an
extent that in 1860 for instance, when the waves of
messianism were rising once more, the tsaddik Eliezer
Dzikever could publicly declare that, notwithstanding
his daily expectation of the Messiah, he could take an
oath on it that he would not come this year. Frankism,
on the other hand, diverted the messianic idea into a
new path, and with Frank a new kind of Messiah
entered upon the stage. No more talk of a return to
Palestine, not a word of rebuilding the temple in Jeru¬
salem. Instead, a materialistic religion; in Frank’s own
words, “not to the sage and the learned was it given,
but to me, an ignorant fellow; for the sage look up to
heaven where there is nothing to see, while I look down
to earth and see what God does on it.”

He likened himself to the unskilled apprentice who
drills a hole through the perfect pearl which no master
dared to pierce: “So I will with God’s help pierce all
and bring life to you.” And by life he understood well¬
being and freedom in the fair country of Poland, whose
napie in popular belief comes from the Hebrew po lin
(here shall you pass the night) and which he would not
trade for all the countries in the world filled with dia¬
monds to the rim.

Hassidism never transgressed the legal framework of
traditional Judaism. Even the heresies of which it was
accused amounted to no more than a lax and noisy
prayer service and the substitution of a corrupted Seph¬
ardic (Spanish-Jewish) liturgy for the Ashkenasic (Ger¬
man-Jewish). Frankism, however, is sheer antinomian-
isjn.

Like so many since St. Paul, yet surpassing them all,
the new Messiah proclaimed the end of all law, not
just the Jewish one: “I have come to abolish all laws

End of the Law

and religions and bring life to the world. . . . Do not
believe that only the Jews have to be saved, God forbid,
all mankind has to.” And for that purpose all social
institutions have to be destroyed because they stand in
the way of salvation.

It is here that the philosophical structure of Frankism
breaks down. The place of the old myths which are to
be destroyed is taken up by a new one: The work of
destruction has to be accomplished by man’s descent to
the lowest depths of abomination.

Old Jewish ideas meet here with Christian and Gnostic
ones. It was common belief that the coming of the Mes¬
siah would signal the end of evil and sin. That could
mean two things: either that no more sins would be
committed or that they no longer would be considered
sins. In any case, according to the Talmud, first the
world will have to be filled with heresy, the same answer
(with opposite value signs, of course) Christianity gives
about the second coming of Christ. For, in the Talmud,
the Hebrew word for heresy, minuth, usually stands for
Christianity. The Frankist propaganda referred copiously
to this and other talmudic quotations which picture “the
end of the days” as an era of general depravity, when all
houses of worship will be houses of whoredom, when the
wisdom of the scholars will stink to heaven and virtue be
scoffed at; in short, the world will be turned upside
down. Frank saw his calling in achieving this goal and
leading humanity through this time:

I have not come to uplift, I have come to destroy
and debase everything until it has sunk so low that
it cannot sink any lower.

The road into the abyss is terrifying and fear¬
some. Even our father Jacob was afraid of it and
did not dare to step on the heavenly ladder. It con-

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

sists of two converging parts that meet at the
bottom, one part leading downwards, the other up¬
wards, and there is no ascending without descend¬
ing first. So the world was to wait for another
Jacob.

The idea of no ascent without descent is drawn from
the Talmud and was very popular with Cabbalists.
Hassidism, too, knows of a state of lawlessness, not in
the abyss of abomination, but on the heights of ecstasy
where “the distinction between sacred and profane no
longer exists because all has become holy” and—to
quote Buber once more—“laws and commandments are
folding their wings because annihilated is the evil urge
that hovers over them,” in other words, not suppressing
sin, but conquering it by hallowing the profane. Frank’s
only concern, however, was the descent into the abyss:

Down the abyss leads the way and everybody
must have a lion’s heart and no fear, for I shall go
ahead.

And as I stand before you, ignorant and crude
—I have been chosen, for I am the darkness out of
which the light emerges!

It has been said: “A star came forward out of
Jacob.” This star has existed from the earliest be¬
ginning and has been falling lower and lower ever
since. All vile and heinous things are in its power,
and it is the gate through which I shall lead you.

Ritual Sex

This is nothing but the old Pauline-Gnostic idea of
the felix culpa, the holy sin, of the road to God leading
through sin, the perverse desire of fighting evil with
evil, of doing away with sin by sinning. One is reminded
of, the Khlyste and their call: “Go down into yourself
like into a grave and be as Christ who became flesh to
destroy sin with sin!” This, of course, was not a call to
theft and murder, but meant, as with St. Paul, “the sin
of the flesh.” Besides public meals on fastdays (also
practiced by the young Jewish revolutionaries of eastern
Europe as part of the “class war”) it took, with the
Frankists, the form of a ritualistic libertinism. Under
the guise of the (misread?) Bible verse “Praise the
Lord who permits the forbidden” (Psalm 146) and such
bewildering sayings of the Talmud as “Great is the sin
committed for its own sake, greater than the good deed
not committed for its own sake” or “The subversion of
the Law is its fulfillment,” a complete reversal of values
is attained. Everything is permitted, lies, deceit, adultery
(“there is no such thing in heaven”), all moral concepts
reversed, and truth turned into absurdity. Interrogated
by a rabbinical court, some Frankists admitted to having
had sexual intercourse with married women in the
presence and with permission of their husbands, while
\)thers confessed to incestuous intercourse. Championing
this, even before Frank’s arrival in Poland, was the

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

family of the rabbi of Rohatyn, Elisha Schorr, whose
daughter Hanna, a kind of Frankist priestess, uttered
in sexual rapture whole passages of the Zohar, the Cab¬
balistic bible.

This was something unheard of in the ghetto. The
Cabbala contains a host of paradoxes and the Zohar is
overflowing with sexual symbolism, albeit transposed
to the divine and accessible only to the few. The po¬
pulace swallowed it eagerly. Their walled-up hatred of
the clergy found an outlet at last and turned into a
destructive mania, the morbid lust for tearing down
and trampling under foot all that is holy. This passionate
nihilism was the motive power of Frankism. It found
expression in numerous sayings of Frank which often
sound like the sexual freedom and antiestablishment
slogans of nowadays. So does Sabbatai Zevi’s call for
woman liberation from under the yoke of male domina¬
tion. Here follow some of Frank’s characteristic pro¬
nouncements:

Throw away what you have learned! Trample on
all the laws you have obeyed and obey only me!

How many times have I told you: We have to
trample under foot everything we know! All the
prayers that have been sent up during the five
thousand years the world has existed are nothing but
empty words!

Whatever I step on, will perish. I have come to
destroy everything!

Or such Manichean and openly cynical remarks as:

How could God allow a world to exist full of
death and misery? This would contradict his om¬
nipotence. No, he who created this world cannot
be the true God.

Even God cannot be approached without money.

Ritual Sex
But then again:

A hero is not he who subdues his enemy by force,
but he who can suffer distress and grief.

Do not let an ugly word pass your lips and do
not say bad things about other people, for it was
not given to you to examine the heart of man and
to judge between good and bad.

Whosoever doe's not love his neighbor and takes
joy in hurting him, whosoever swears and slanders
is not a true human being and cannot stay with me
under one roof.

And what possibly were the most beautiful words Frank
was ever to utter and which can almost serve as a coun¬
terpart to Jesus’ cursing the figtree (Matt. 21:19).

I was on the road once. The sun was very hot
and I was tired and had no place to rest. Then I saw
a tree with cool shade. The fragrance of its fruit
filled the air and a brook of fresh water rushed past
it. I lay down under the tree, ate some of the fruit
and drank the sweet water. When I awoke, I asked
the tree, how shall I thank you? By wishing you
many branches? You have them. By wishing you
sweet and fragrant fruit? You have them. A brook
joTTresh water? You have it. All I can wish you is
this: May many more people come and find rest in
your shade and give thanks to God for having
created you.

The religious rites of the Frankists consisted of
ecstatic songs and dances accompanied by wild clapping
of hands, similar to the Hassidic dances, but with female
participation and ending in an orgiastic ritual. The
service usually began with Frank kneeling down and
fastening two burning candles to a wooden bench,
driving a nail into the wood between them and pointing

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

a cross in all directions, exclaiming: “Forsa damus para
verti, seibul grandi asserverti!” (in Ladino, the Spanish
dialect of the Sephardic Jews: “Give us the strength to
see you, the great bliss to serve you!”) Then the lights
were extinguished and pandemonium broke loose. Men
and women undressed completely “to get at the truth
in its nakedness” and took to copulating pell-mell, with
only the leader keeping aloof in the midst of it all.

The Khlyste had similar rites, with dervish-like dances,
ceremonial extinguishing of the lights, and “common
sin” or “love of Christ,” so called because the Holy
Ghost was supposed to bring the couples together. Ritual
nakedness symbolizing the sinlessness of Adam before
the Fall, was also practiced by the “Brethren and Sisters
of the Free Spirit.” Their mass was conducted by a nude
priest and accompanied with much singing and rejoicing
by an equally nude congregation. They engaged in free
sexual intercourse, even incest, because, referring to
the saying of St. Paul “To the clean everything is clean,”
they did not consider sinning whatever they did—exactly
as the tsaddiks who often speak as though they had been
disciples of Master Eckhart!

A weekly high point of the Frankist ritual was the
Friday evening reception of “Queen Sabbath” where the
men, singing the prayer “Lekhu doidi likrass kallo!”
(Hebrew for “Come, my lover, meet the bride!”) danced
around a “topless” young woman who was crowned
with the sacred paraphernalia of the synagogue and then
hurled themselves upon her.

The sexual element also played a distinct role in
Hassidism, but was by far not as important. It arose
from two sources, joy of life and mystic symbolism.
Contrary to Christianity, Judaism takes an affirmative
view of sex and does not regard it as sinful, even if it

Ritual Sex

does not serve procreation. (Compare this to St. Paul
who called it whoredom, or St. Jerome who called it
filth.) Any abstinence, be it temporary or permanent
(celibacy), is therefore forbidden and any vows pertain¬
ing to it are valid only for one or two weeks at most
and only with the partner’s consent. The use of contra¬
ceptives is not forbidden whereas the only way to preg¬
nancy control tolerated by the Church, the so-called
rhythm or cyclical method, is frowned upon as equal
to temporary abstinence. Whereas the Christian Sunday
is a day of contemplation and sexual abstention, the
Jewish Sabbath is a day of rest and enjoyment, sex
not jiist included, but expressly recommended. Religious
Jews are therefore not as biased in sexual matters as
Christians are. What would sound obscene from the
mouth of a teacher of the Church or a Christian mystic,
sounds perfectly innocent from the mouth of the
Balshem and offensive only to prudish ears. This ex¬
plains, by the way, the inclusion of the erotic Song of
Songs among the Holy Scriptures (although interpreted
symbolically as the love of God for his chosen people
and the two “fawn-like breasts of Shulamite” allegorized
as the lawgiver Moses and his brother Aaron)—the Song
is usually recited on Friday evenings, announcing the
customary night of copulation.

The Talmud provides the second source of the Jew¬
ish attitude, the mystical one. The Shekhina or divine
presence, a synonym for God, is present when man and
woman join in love and she rejoices over it. The
Shekhina (perhaps because the word is of the feminine
gender) appears in the Cabbala as the female counter¬
part of God, the incarnate form of divine splendor; and
the relation of Moses to God, as the sexual intercourse
of Moses with the Shekhina.

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Thus the Balshem regarded the prayer as the pair¬
ing of man with the Shekhina, and “just as the joining
of man and woman begins with a vigorous movement
back and forth, one should begin one’s prayers moving
back and forth, but then stand motionless and em¬
brace the Shekhina tenderly.” This was for the tsad-
dik Shneyer Salmen of Ladi the best way to get rid of
the “unclean thoughts” arising during prayer or study,
and to reduce them to their divine roots (“sublimation
of the libido,” Freud might have said). The tsaddik Levi
Isaac of Berditchev dared to compare Israel to a woman
receiving from God’s overflow, always longing for her
lover and trying to seduce him. Divine love turns into
“divine concupiscence” and the tsaddik becomes the
“hose” through which God’s blessing flows down from
heaven to earth. The closest pupil of the Balshem, Jacob
Joseph of Polnoy, demanded of his disciples to let the
“sinful thoughts” rise to the surface in order to smash
them and “uplift the divine spark they imprison.” In
vulgar Hassidism this led to such advice as “Imagine
during the prayer a naked woman and let it come to an
ejaculation in order to cleanse yourself and ascend to
a higher level.” Whatever one may think of this kind
of “cleansing oneself,” it was a far cry from the prac¬
tices of the Frankists.

A Puzzle to Jews
and non-Jews

Frankism has remained a puzzle to Jews and Poles
alike. With the exception of Gershom Scholem who at

A Puzzle to Jews and Non-Jews

least credited Frank’s followers with a “pure heart,”
and Salman Rubashov-Shazar, the former president of
the State of Israel, who called them “brothers never¬
theless,” no historian, whether Jewish or non-Jewish,
tried to do justice to Frank. If they did not shun him
altogether, they heaped deprecation and disdain on him
and did not care to collect Frankist documents. The
late president of the Zionist World Organization, Nahum
Sokolow, discontinued his Hebrew translation of Alex¬
ander Kraushaar’s work on Frankism upon learning of
the author’s conversion to Catholicism. The booklet
Frank und die Frankisten by Heinrich Graetz, the noted
Jewish historian, abounds in such terms as liar, im¬
postor, arch-liar, charlatan (Liigner, Betriiger, Erzliigner,
AufSchneider), and the Great Polish Encyclopedia of
1964 begins the article on Frank with the words “no¬
torious charlatan.” To the Poles the Frankists were first
a repentant flock returning to the fold of Mother Church,
then a gang of heretics; to the Jews, an abomination of
the foulest kind, a bunch of renegades one could not
get rid of fast enough. Both were wrong. The sublime
and the abject, the angelic and the diabolic are so
intimately intertwined in Frank’s character that it is im¬
possible to separate the prophet and visionary from the
rogue and chartalan, and to call him the one or the other.
Yet, impostor or not, the man had a power-nourished
vision of leading his brothers, the Polish Jews, out of
their miserable wretchedness. And to this end all means
seemed fit to him. He had charisma, impossible to deny,
and an almost hypnotic power over his people, who
followed him blindly.

The similarity of the Frankists rites to those of the
Khlyste and their Living Christs (each village had its
own) on the one hand, and to those of the Barbelo-

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Gnostics, Carpocratians, and other sects of early Chris¬
tianity on the other, is striking. Elasar Flekeles, a Prague
rabbi, accused the Frankists in 1799 of “all sorts of
evil, godless and infamous deeds unheard of even among
the wildest barbarians. These people are worse than all
the villains and criminals who ever lived since the begin¬
ning of the world. . . . They have a secret according to
which it is good to masturbate and smear the body with
the outflow. . . . They consider it pious and highly rec-
ommendable to sleep with your neighbor’s wife, in the
presence of ten men-folk [probably a religious per¬
formance because ten is the minimum number of adult
men required for the Jewish community prayers, the
so-called minyari], and in addition recommend other
abominations and horrors such as fornication with male
persons and even with animals. They worship idols,
practice witchcraft, live in debauchery and whore¬
dom. . .” These could be literal quotations from the
Panarion of St. Epiphan or other anti-Gnostic writings
of the Church Fathers.

All these various sects had one thing in common:
the female element, which was missing in both the
strict monotheism of the Jews and the Christian Trinity
and which re-emerged during the Middle Ages with
the Cabbala and the cult of Mary. Jacob Frank found
the concept of the mystic trinity in the Cabbala and the
Doenme teachings and shaped it into the union of the
Holy Primeval One (Attika Kadisha, the cause of all
causes), the Holy King (Malka Kadisha, the Messiah
or Santo Sehor himself) and the Great Mother {Ma-
tronita Elyona, Frank’s wife, and after her death his
daughter Eve). The female counterpart of the Messiah
already existed for Sabbatai Zevi in the person of the
Polish-Jewish girl Sara, a fugitive from the slaughter of

Ritual Sex

the Jews by the Cossaks, who had landed in a Leghorn
bordello. There Sabbatai Zevi appeared to her in a
dream to make her his bride and eventually wife, exactly
as Simon Magus, the grandfather of all heretics, who
also found his heavenly bride Helena in a brothel. Frank
reserved the part of the female Messiah for his daughter
who, after his death,^ stepped to the head of the sect.

And as late as 1823 a Saint-Simonist delegation made
the rounds of the Jewish communities of Turkey in
search of the female Messiah and virgin-mother to take
her t6 Paris where, together with the male Messiah,
Pere Enfantin, she was to bring salvation to mankind.

Saint-Simonism has other affinities with Frankism,
e.g. the messianic concept of the abolition of sin and
the anti-Paulinist “rehabilitation of the flesh” (rehabi¬
litation de la chair.) Perhaps this was due to the in¬
fluence of some Saint-Simonists of Frankist descent.
The most prominent among them was Jean Czynski who
had fled to Paris after the Polish insurrection of 1830
and tied the liberation of Poland to that of the Jews.

In the Crossfire of
Church and
Synagogue

The Frankists did not make any bones about their
orgiastic rites and soon became a public outrage. In
the summer of 1756 they were excommunicated by the
Synod of the Jewish Communities: all contact with them
was forbidden, their women were branded as harlots,

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

their children as bastards, and, in many cases, were
forcibly removed from them. At the same time the study
of the Cabbala was made anathema to anyone under
the age of thirty, that of the Zohar to anyone under
forty. Referring to the decree forbidding the establish¬
ment of sects, the Synod demanded the Catholic Church
declare the Frankists heretics, which would have con¬
demned them to be burned at the stake. The rabbis
were so sure of their case that they sent out invitations
to the spectacle. (As can be seen the Jewish clergy
was no less fanatic than their Christian peers. A char¬
acteristic example is the excommunication of Uriel
Acosta by the rabbis of Amsterdam in 1632 which says:
“We have induced the Government to confiscate all his
books, burn them publicly, and put him into prison; we
tried hard to expel him from the town. Since, in this
Government, freedom of religion exists and there is no
Inquisition, it was not in our hands to bring against
him the death penalty, only to exile him. But may his
sins ensnare this wretch to die like a dog in his place
of exile.” These are the words of the very victims of the
Spanish Inquisition.)

Chased from house and home, brought to beggary,
deprived of their children, the Frankists had sufficient
cause to hate the rabbis. There is no doubt that the
persecution by the Synagogue actually drove them into
the arms of the Church (just as it drove Uriel Acosta
to suicide). Even the Balshem is reported to have
blamed the rabbis for the subsequent schism. Appre¬
hended at their services in the little town of Kopyczynce,
a group of Frankists were dragged through town with
ropes around their necks and handed over to the local
authorities to be punished for flagrant violation of human
decency, Jewish and Christian alike. They turned to the

Church and Synagogue

Church for help, calling themselves anti-Talmudists.
(The name Frankist is a much later usage). Bishop
Dembowski of Kamenets-Podolsk, a notorious Jew-
baiter, ordered them to be released, with a religious
confrontation (or disputation) to follow between them
and the rabbis. He thereby knowingly overstepped his
legal competence because the Polish Jews had been
granted religious freedom by the Statute of Kalisz (1264)
which expressly exempted them from this kind of con¬
frontation. When, therefore, no Jew showed up for the
disputation, the bishop set a new date, commanding the
Jews to appear under threat of flogging. This time a
Jewish delegation did appear to contest the legality of
the proceedings, supporting their claim with the Statute
of Kalisz which had been solemnly confirmed by several
kings. The bishop rejected this plea, and the disputation
began. It lasted for eight days, June 20 to 28, 1757,
with Frank himself not taking part. The rabbis were
asked to take a stand on the following Frankist theses:

I. We believe in everything God has said in the Old
Testament and has told us to believe.

II. The Mosaic, the prophetic, and the other books
of the Old Testament are like a richly clothed virgin
who hides her face behind a veil so that her beauty
cannot be seen; these books, full of divine wisdom
and of mysterious things to come, cannot be understood
without the help of God.

III. The commentaries to the Old Testament are-
called Talmud and contain many fairy-tales, lies, and
assertions that contradict God and God’s teachings.

IV. We believe, according to the Holy Scriptures, that
God is one, with no beginning and no end, creator of
heaven and earth and of all visible and invisible things.

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

V. We believe that God consists of three persons who
are alike and indivisible.

VI. We believe that God adopted human form and ate,
slept, and satisfied all other human needs without defil¬
ing himself.

VII. We do not believe that Jerusalem will ever be
rebuilt.

VIII. The belief of the Jews that the Messiah will
exalt them over and above anybody else and bring them
happiness and respect is false.

IX. God himself will appear in human form and re¬
deem the whole world from the sins of all past genera¬
tions.

The rabbis accepted theses I, II and IV without re¬
serve, thesis III up to the words “and contain,” de¬
manding proofs for the second part. They refrained from
disputing the remaining theses so as not to expose them¬
selves to an accusation of slander of the Church or
blasphemy. Curiously enough, the theses do not mention
Jesus Christ and refer only to the Messiah who will be
God himself in human form. They come rather close to
the Christian articles of faith, although some of them
could also be taken from the Zohar and appear to rep¬
resent the Frankist creed except for one point which is
prudently withheld: namely, that the Messiah or God in
human form is supposed to be Frank himself.

The bishop pronounced judgment: Brazenly disregard¬
ing the issues involved, he found the rabbis guilty of
having wronged the Frankists and sentenced them to
flogging and to the paying of heavy fines and the cost of
repairs to the cathedral tower of Kamenets. The Tal¬
mud was denounced as blasphemous and ordered to be
burned in public. As was customary, the execution of

Church and Synagogue

these orders was left to the lay authorities. Surprisingly
enough, but characteristic of Poland at that time, they
were satisfied with the burning of the Talmud and simply
disregarded the rest of the sentence. During the search
for the books many Jewish homes were pillaged, and
thousands of Talmud folios were burned in a great auto-
da-fe in the cathedral town and elsewhere. While the
rabbis proclaimed a day of fasting and mourning and
appealed to the Pope for help, the bishop died suddenly
in the midst of it all. A sigh of relief went through the
Jewish communities. The tables were turned and the
rabbis resumed their offensive, assisted by the non-Jew-
ish t)opulace who only yesterday had ransacked Jewish
homes, but now saw in the bishop’s death an act of God
or the work of Jewish sorcery.

Deprived of their protector and made outlaws, the
Frankists found themselves caught in the crossfire of
Church and Synagogue. They tried to escape to Turkey,
but were not admitted, probably because of rabbinical
intervention, and were left wandering aimlessly with no
shelter, hungry and cold in the no-man’s-land at the
Turkish-Polish border, with some of them smuggling
themselves across. Frank himself, being a Turkish sub¬
ject, was allowed to pass, and joined his wife who, a
year later, gave birth to a boy (who died at the age of
three). Fearing an attempt by Turkish Jews on his life,
Frank decided to follow the example of Sabbatai Zevi
and to become a Moslem, together with a number of
his followers. Years later, before the tribunal of the'
Warsaw Inquisition, he defended this step as having
been taken under duress and only for appearance’s sake.

The ease with which he could make this change did
not disillusion his followers. It strenghtened their belief
that he was the successor of Sabbatai Zevi. This was

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

all the easier for them, as the idea of the Messiah’s
necessary apostasy and death had by now become an
essential part of Jewish messianology. (As Rabbi Is-
sakhar of Smyrna had said, the Messiah had to taste
everything, even death.) Frank, for his part, now took
to introducing his people into his divine mission by some
strange ceremonies. For example, he had four of them
form a circle with him as the fifth, and stand there for
an hour with heads pressed against each other, arms
around shoulders and “breathing heavily.” Or he would
proclaim himself lord and master in the following way:
He would fix nine candles to the rim of a barrel, light
them with a tenth candle and whisper: “Who is like
you? No one is like you!” Then he would blow out the
candles, light them again and repeat it once more; pro¬
nouncing the same words in a loud voice, everybody
would step forward, first singly, then together, forming
a “royal line” {kav hamlikho in Hebrew) and rendering
him homage as “the Lord.” The three main books of
the Frankist bible accordingly bear the titles The Book
of the Lord’s Words (Ksiega slow panskich), The Book
of the Lord’s Dreams (Ksiega snow panskich), and
The Lord’s Chronicle (Kronika panska). Only the first
one has been preserved in the library of the University
of Cracow in a handwritten copy, which contains more
than two thousand of Frank’s sayings. The other two
are only known in fragments, from quotations. There
also existed a fourth book. The Prophecies of the Prophet
Isaiah, Member of the Holy Sanhedrion, as Revealed by
the Great Shaddai, Lord of White Magic. This pseudo-
Isaiah was like the other three books, written symboli¬
cally in red and green ink in somewhat clumsy Polish
by the three elders who, after Frank’s death, became the
spiritual leaders of the sect. It contains abstruse proph-

Back to Poland

ecies about a coming world war in which the great
powers of Europe will perish and the “new Jacob,” the
man in the form of God (cf. Jesus, God in the form
of man) will rise from the dead. He will gather Israel,
“this little, despised, miserable, yearning, scarcely breath¬
ing people from all corners of the world and lead them
to Jerusalem and the country God promised to Abra¬
ham. . . . All nations then will turn to the house of
Jacob; the proud rulers of the world will be imprisoned
and deprived of everything so as to make them taste the
fate of the children of Israel. And Jacob will rule for¬
ever over his oppressors.”

. The paucity of Frankist literature is mainly due to
destruction. Later generations of Frankists, having risen
to the highest levels of Polish society, were ashamed
of their dubious, maybe incestuous, origins and destroyed
any evidence they could find. An additional factor was
the attitude of Jewish historians who did not care to
collect Frankist writings for reasons we have mentioned
already.

Back to Poland

The new adepts of Mohammed obtained a “firman”’
from the Sultan, which gave them safe conduct for
their return to Poland and entitled them to claim dam¬
ages for the losses they had suffered there. Armed with
this document, the group (or “Company” as Frank called
them) returned to Poland, hardly two years after the

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

“Lord’s” flight to Turkey. Putting themselves under the
protection of the Polish king, they settled in the form
of a commune of three camps in eastern Galicia. Frank
ordered “all money to be delivered to the treasurer who
will husband it and care for the needs of the brothers.
Nobody is to regard anything as his own, but everything
has to be shared with all others.”

With royal permission, the Frankists demanded not
only damages for property and goods, but also the return
of the wives who had been taken from them. This was
done, even if the women had remarried and had to be
returned by force. People by the thousands flocked now
to the miracle worker who healed the sick and the lame
and exorcised evil spirits. For the first time there was
also talk of a possible conversion to Catholicism.

While the Company of Frank’s followers led a modest
life, Frank surrounded himself with oriental splendor,
armed bodyguards, and a harem of twelve odalisques.
But he thought revenge against the rabbis. In this en¬
deavor an event came to his aid which turned the
people’s wrath against the Jews: the libel of ritual
murder raised its head once again.

This slander was first used by the Romans against
the early Christians and by the Fathers of the Church
against the Gnostics. During the Middle Ages it was
directed against the Jews, leading often to cruel per¬
secutions. Although branded as a vicious falsehood by
several popes and Catholic theologians, it has been
raised time and again. (The Khlyste were also accused
of it). At no time, however, did accusations of this kind
multiply as much as in 18th-century Poland. Under the
influence of the Jesuits, Poland had changed from a
country of religious tolerance to a hell for all non-Cath-
olics. Not only Jews were persecuted, but also Protes-

Back to Poland

tants and especially Arians, whose famous cultural
center, the academy and printing press of Rakow, was
burned to the ground. Yet, nobody had to suffer as
much as the Jews. There was practically no town with¬
out a ritual murder trial. The Jews appealed to the king,
referring to the royal prohibition against accusing them
of the use of Christian blood, a decree that had been
reaffirmed at the coro'nation of several kings. They also
dispatched a delegation to Rome with a copy of the papal
bull of 1247 exonerating them from this accusation and
unequivocally declaring them “innocent of such things
which contradict their laws.” Pope Clemens XIII in¬
structed his Warsaw Nuncio to intercede on behalf of
the Jews, but not before a number of them had been put
to the rack and quartered alive.

Exploiting the heated mood of the day, Frank de¬
manded resumption of the disputation of Kamenets. The
papal Nuncio and the Cardinal-Primate of Poland came
out against it, but the disputation was already under
way and they were faced with an accomplished fact.
Frank had apparently hinted at conversion, and the
Canon Mikulski of Lemberg already foresaw mass con¬
versions of Jews. Both Primate and Nuncio had good
reasons for their opposition. They did not believe the
sincerity of Frank’s possible conversion and reported to
the Curia in Rome that they suspected him to be a
dangerous sectarian who wanted to use the conversion as
a cover-up for a new sect which practiced polygamy and
other “abominations.” Besides, conversion would protect
him against the rabbis and improve the living conditions
of his followers. However, their objection to a renewal
of the disputation was of no avail.

Zionism without Zion

As a matter of fact, nothing was further from Frank’s
mind than conversion. What he really wanted was to
fulfill his mission, with himself as the resurrected “Lord”
and twelve of his closest associates as his apostles or
ministers of state. He petitioned the king to assign to
him a territory in eastern Galicia where he could settle
with his followers in a vassal state with himself at the
head. The Jews of the whole world would flock then
to Poland and enrich her. In other words, a Zionism
without Zion, as it was advocated under the name of
Territorialism in the first few decades of the present
century, leading to various projects of settling the Jews
of eastern Europe in Uganda, Biro-Bidjan and other
places. The plan found favor with both king and mag¬
nates, but floundered on strategic considerations, that
is, the risk of settling a group with close relations to
Turkey on the Turkish border.

In the meantime, the Canon of Lemberg had become
impatient. Frank had promised the baptism of his ap¬
proximately 30,000 followers, but was delaying it with
one excuse after another. First he pretended he had to
prepare them for this important step and would need
several months for it. Then he listed a set of conditions,
under which the Frankists would be allowed to continue
wearing beards and earlocks, to dress the Jewish way,
to keep their Jewish name along with the Christian one,

Zionism without Zion

to marry only among themselves, to keep both Saturday
and Sunday as days of rest, to study the holy books of
the Cabbala, especially the Zohar, and not to eat pork.

Similar conditions were set some 300 years earlier by
those Spanish Jews who agreed to be baptized. They
implored the Inquisition not to force them to eat pork,
at least. This, of course, was rejected, and any pseudo-
Christian was now easily recognizable by his instinctive
aversion to pork. Strangely enough, the descendants of
these forced converts still living on the island of Majorca
are contemptuously called by the common people
“chuetas,” bacon eaters.

Frank was in no hurry to be baptized but waited for
the right moment to establish a Doenme-like sect (which
had similar features: two names, two days of rest, etc.).
Even his request that the disputation be resumed was
a delaying maneuver because he still hoped to get per¬
mission for his settlement project.

But why the hurry of the clergy?

The biggest ritual murder trial of that time was the
one in Zhitomir, in the wake of which 11 Jews were
cruelly executed. The Jewish delegation which had gone
to Rome prevailed upon the Vatican to have a new trial.
The new inquiry established as the instigator of the plot
Bishop Soltyk of Zhitomir who, leading a dissolute life,
had confiscated the fortunes of the imprisoned Jews to
pay his gambling debts. A new disputation, he thought,
would not only help him escape papal censure, but
possibly bring him praise if some Jews, the Frankists,
would admit the blood libel. Upon his insistence the
disputation was resumed posthaste. (This is the one
in which the Balshem is supposed to have participated.)
It was not a mere repetition of the Kamenets dispu¬
tation, but a well staged show on a big scale. The

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Lemberg cathedral was surrounded by a huge array of
soldiers and the public, mainly nobles and patricians,
were admitted for a high fee. The rabbis were made to
enter the church under threat of heavy fines, and all holy
pictures and statues were veiled from sight, in order to
protect them from the rabbis’ “evil looks.” Again, rabbis
and Frankists faced each other, but this time it was an
open confrontation between Church and Synagogue, with
Canon Mikulski as mediator, accuser, and judge all in
one, and the Frankists just a tool in his hands. The
rabbis were given a “Manifesto” of seven theses, each to
be answered within several days. The first six of them
were more or less identical with the theses of the first
disputation and, likewise, do not mention Jesus Christ,
but only the Messiah or the true Messiah. Thesis VII
accuses the Jews of ritual murder.

Although the Frankists had good reason to take
revenge on the rabbis, thesis VII apparently was not
of their doing. (This is also the assumption of the Jew¬
ish historians Mayer Balaban and Gershom Scholem,
the latter emphasizing that in no Frankist writing is there
any hint of ritual murder, let alone a possible belief
in the truth of that accusation.) The original version of
thesis VII was in all probability the same as that of thesis
III of the Kamenets disputation, which merely declared
the Talmud blasphemous, while here the Talmud is
accused of commanding the use of Christian blood. This
is a charge against Judaism that has nothing to do with
Christian faith and goes beyond the scope of the Mani¬
festo which deals with Christian dogmas. Everything
points to bishop Soltyk’s having altered the text at the
very last moment. In any case, the Frankists were not
consulted and the disputation was hastily called to order.

The spectacle dragged on for almost two months.

Zionism without Zion

The public began to show signs of boredom and the
ladies, it is reported, yawned shamelessly. Mikulski was
desperate. The Nuncio had urged him to stop the sorry
show, so he simply skipped points V and VI to get at
the main issue: Thesis VII and the blood libel. He had
saved his trump for the very last, but lo and behold,
the Jews out-trump^ him. Exactly as in the great
disputation of Barcelona in 1263, the scales weighed in
favor of them. (To be sure, this earned the Spanish
Jews the accusation of blasphemy. No matter how you
cut. it,'the Jew cannot win.) The climax of the disputa¬
tion was the plea of Haim Rappaport, the chief-rabbi
of Lemberg, concluding with these words:

^ It is against the laws of nature and of human

reason that we, the sons of Abraham, would use hu¬
man blood. The Holy Scriptures state: He who spills
human blood, his blood shall be spilled, for man is
made in God’s image. Popes, emperors and kings as
well as your own experts have given us their un¬
equivocal testimony, to wit that we behave accord¬
ing to the Holy Scriptures and God’s command¬
ments. Highly venerable Lord Canonicus, please
bear in mind that the accusations against us are
based on erroneous translations. We appeal to your
conscience and put ourselves under the protection
of your grace in the deep conviction that God Al¬
mighty who gave the Holy Scriptures to all of us,
has chosen you because of your wisdom to acknowl¬
edge our innocence and free us mercifully from this
accusation.

Abounding as it was with quotations from the Fathers
of the Church and Christian theologians, this speech was
by no means the work of the rabbi, who did not know a
word of Latin or Polish and certainly had never heard
of Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome or Hugo Grotius, Roberto

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Bellarmini, and Gregory Leti, all mentioned in the re¬
buttal. It was composed in German by Dr. Abraham
Usiel, a Jewish physician in Brody, and hurriedly
translated into Polish by a German bookseller aided by
the speaker of the rabbis, Baer Bolekhover, who read it
in the last session of the disputation, with the white-
haired rabbi at his side.

The speech did not fail to make a deep impression.
The Nuncio reported to Rome of the excellent defense
of the Jews. Frank had watched the proceedings from
a place nearby and hurried now to the aid of his cause.
He did it by showing himself to the public, driving daily
through town in a coach-and-six, escorted by twelve
horsemen with drawn sabres, followed by another coach
with his wife in the dress of a harem-lady, and an array
of carriages with his entourage. The clergy angrily for¬
bade the display, and the disputation came to an incon¬
clusive end. The records were all sent for scrutiny to
Rome where they gather dust up to this day. (Bishop
Soltyk died in a state of madness.)

Now, however, Mikulski insisted on his part of the
deal. He had provided three months room and board
for the Frankists at a cost of 7,500 florins. So he wanted
to get it over as fast as possible and have them bap¬
tized. But Frank kept dallying and coming up with
new demands: The ceremony should not take place in
Lemberg, but the whole Company should travel at
Church expense to Warsaw and be baptized there in
the presence of the king and the royal court. Besides,
he claimed to need more instruction in the New
Testament, since he knew only the Lord’s Prayer and
a part of the Gospel according to St. Luke, and that
in Hebrew. However, he realized that he was cornered
this time and knew that he would encounter the subborn

Zionism without Zion

resistance of his own people. They could stand his con¬
version to Islam, remembering Sabbatai Zevi, but Chris¬
tian baptism—that they could not stomach. So he tried
to make it palatable to them by flavoring it with all kinds
of ingredients. Baptism was a necessary evil, the lowest
point of the descent into the abyss after which the ascent
would start. The shell was to be changed, not the core;
the jug, not the wine. Like Sabbatai Zevi before them,
they would have to adopt, if in appearance only, a loath¬
some creed in order to continue their work unmolested
by anyone. Baptism would be the beginning of the end
of Church and society, and they,. the Frankists, were
chosen to accomplish the destruction from inside “like
soldiers storming a city through the sewers.” Absolute
secrecy and strictest discipline were now required,
together with a meticulous conformism to the commands
and practices of the Church so as not to arouse sus¬
picion. While paying lip service to the Catholic Church,
they should never lose sight of their true goal or forget
that they belong together. In his petition to Empress
Maria Theresa, Galinski, a defector from Frank and
former rabbi who sued him in 1776 for return of money
he had given him, quoted Frank as saying:

Our Lord and King Sabbatai Zevi had to pass
through the faith of the Ismaelites. . . but I, Jaeob,
the most perfeet one, have to pass through the
Nazarene faith because Jesus of Nazareth was the
skin or rind of the fruit and his coming only per¬
mitted in order to open a path for the true Mes¬
siah. We have, therefore, to accept pro forma this
Nazarene religion and observe it meticulously so as
to appear as better Christians than the Christians
themselves. . . Still, we must not marry any of them
nor enjoy any of their whores. . . and in no way mix
with other nations. And although we profess Chris-

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

tianity and attend dutifully to all their command¬
ments, we must never forget in our hearts the three
heads of our faith, the Lord-Kings Sabbatai Zevi,
Berakhya [his successor, died 1720] and Jacob
Frank, the most perfect of them all.

It is amazing what heights of persuasion and vigor,
even beauty of expression, Frank reached. Running the
full gamut of emotions from black despair to rosy vistas
of future wealth and happiness, he bewailed the faint¬
heartedness of his people who were unable to follow
the eagle-flight of his thoughts:

You do not understand me, and my words bounce
oflF you like marbles oflF the wall. My cat here knows
more than all of you together. Something divine
grows in me like a pearl, and I have nobody to
show it.

People say my way is crooked, and even I have
often asked myself whether it could not be simpler.

But when I consider the goal, how plain and clear
it is, I keep going step by step, no matter how.

At other times, he promised them pie in the sky and
flattered their vanity. The world will stand on its head,
the lowest will be at top, the highest at the bottom. The
great Polish lords will have to earn their living as poor
cobblers and tailors “with little red goatees, while the
Frankists will have princely titles, wear swords, and
parade through town in ornate clothing. ''Ad kan!” he
exclaimed, swinging himself into the saddle of his horse,
*'Baderekh hamelekh nelekhr (Hebrew for Up to here!
Let us travel the king’s road!) He told them exciting
parables of his superhuman powers and their divine
mission with cryptic hints about a forthcoming war
which would topple state and church and in which the
Jews would take up arms to save the world:

Zionism without Zion

Far away, out in the ocean, there is an island and
a big ship anchored nearby with many arms and
cannon. The island is inhabited by God-fearing Cab-
balists who once a month row out to the ship and
ask whether the time has come yet. One day a
stranger will appear and knock on the hull of the
ship to signal the beginning of the big war.

All wars, all bloodshed, even the atrocities of a
Chmielnitsky, have not changed a thing on earth.
But when the big war comes, God will show him¬
self and bring something new to the world.

When the dogs fight and somebody tries to sepa¬
rate them with a stick, they do not care and keep
on biting each other. So we will take what is ours
While the world drowns in blood. For it pays to fish
in troubled waters. . . If you will harken then to
me and obey my orders, you will get rich like your
fathers and forefathers never dreamed of. Then you
will count my steps and search for my footprints in
order to kiss them.

This kind of talk rose to the heads of the simple
folk from the Polish ghettos. They saw themselves
already as shining knights with fiery swords, saviors of
mankind. Yet, baptism had to come first. True, it was
only the gate, and Christianity a way station to what
Frank called his dass (Hebrew for religion). But only
he who passed through the gate and entered the station
could become a true believer, according to Frank: “If
you knew what my dass is all about, you would come
running to me.”

Here follow some more of his sayings from the time
preceding baptism:

When one drills a well, one hits the dirty, muddy
water first; then only the clean and sweet water
comes up.

I have told you of things which sounded empty to

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

you. But when one cracks walnuts, the outer shell
is, as everyone knows, green and bitter and blackens
the hands, while the meat is sweet (a favored Has-
sidic saying as was also the preceding one about
drilling wells).

There is an invisible tree with three branches, one
of lead, one of copper, one of gold. Everybody clings
to one of them. One day the tree will become
visible and then it will be seen who holds on to the
golden branch.

I will shed my clothes and put on new ones. First
the world will prick up its ears, but then—ho-ho!
(The unnamed disciple who recorded these words
adds: Here the Lord raised his holy finger.)

It is one thing to serve God, another to serve me.
For I walk ahead of God. (This too is a favored
Hassidic image: The tsaddik stands higher than
the angels; they rest in God, he walks ahead of
him.)

No man has ever seen God or known his name
and dwelling place. But I will show you God, for
mine is the power and the glory. And when you will
see God, you will bow your head and say nothing
but “God, my God!”

The Big Step

Thus, at long last, the day of reckoning arrived. But
in spite of Frank’s untiring efforts and to his great
disappointment, only a small fraction of his followers,
hardly 1 in 10, showed up for the conversion ceremony.
Frank never forgave them this betrayal and accused
them of treason for the rest of his life. Of course, he

The Big Step

could not foresee that most of their children and grand¬
children would follow his way, although for other reasons.
Still, some 1,200 Frankists, men, women and children,
stepped up to the baptismal font of the Lemberg Cathe¬
dral in the summer of 1759, hesitatingly and only in
Frank’s presence. (According to the Nuncio he was
standing by and nodding them on.) About as many did
it in other places. Some sources put the total at 20,000.
Following an old Polish custom, they were raised to the
noble rank of Generosus or Nobilis (which earned the
royal chest 500 florins a piece) and received swords and
coats of arms, with members of the high nobility and
clergy’ serving a godparents.

The world has never seen anything like it. It was
not altogether unusual to raise converts to the rank of
nobility, especially when they had rendered good service
to their masters, as had the many Jewish bankers and
court physicians, with popes and kings their godfathers.
Thus in 1492, the year the Jews were driven out of
Spain, Queen Isabella and Cardinal Mendoza assisted
as godparents at the baptism of the royal treasurer
Abraham Senior, the head of the Jewish community in
Spain. Somewhat later in Italy the Jewish musician and
composer Juan of Florence was baptized and received
from his godfather, Giovanni de Medici, later Pope Leo
X, the name Juan de Medici and the castle Verrocchio
with it. The Augsburg Chronica of New Things for the
year 1515 tells the following about it: “There was Pope
Leo X at Rome who had the best lutanist that there
was at the time in the world. He was a German Jew
and the Pope dubbed him a knight.’’ In 1583, Pope
Gregor XIII baptized his physician Jekhiel of Pesaro,
who was given the name of Vitale Medici by his god¬
father Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici; the Cardinal of

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Bologna and the Archduke of Ferrara were among the
godparents of his seven children. In 1599, Pope Pius V
baptized the head of the Jewish community of Rome,
and in 1704, Pope Clemens XI a wealthy Leghorn Jew
with his wife and daughter. These individual cases were
celebrated with much pomp and circumstance, but could
not match the described mass baptism of the Polish
Frankists.

Frank himself was baptized on November 18, 1759,
in Warsaw with King August III as his godfather. (The
officiating bishop lost his miter at this occasion; it fell
off his head, and the Frankists saw it as an act of God.)
Frank’s certificate of baptism is signed in Hebrew: Jacob
Joseph Frank. The other converts received new names,
usually according to the day or month of their baptism
(their descendants can still be recognized by them), e.g.
Niedzielski and Niedzialkowski (from the Polish niedziela
for Sunday) or Lutoslawski (from luty, February),
Kwiecinski (from kwiecien, April), Majewski, Junicz and
the like; others after their birthplace, like Niemirowski;
still others in an altered or translated form of their
previous name, like the two adjutants of Frank, Leib
Krysa, baptized Dominic Anthony Krysinski, and Shlomo
Schorr, baptized Luke Francis Wolowski (shor, Hebrew
for ox, Polish wol), both of them founders of two pro¬
minent Polish families.

However, when Mayer Balaban, like Heinrich Graetz
before him, concluded his History of the Frankist Move¬
ment with the words “Thus the sorry affair was closed
as far as the Jews were concerned,” he was mistaken
indeed.

* * *

The big step had been taken. Frank immediately

The Big Step

petitioned the king once more for assignment of a
territory, an idea he never was to give up, and started
organizing his sect. Of course, he could not do it openly
and therefore demanded strict obedience and deepest
silence from his people:

Do not talk, do not ask questions, do not look
left or right, but follow me though thick and thin,
through fire and water, step by step, without fear
or doubt, until we reach our goal.

Better let your eyes move than your lips. Keep
your thoughts to yourself!

Shut your mouth and when they ask you, say I
know not. Put a lock on your lips!

You have been given into my hand and I can do
. with you as I wish. If I wish to have you with me,
you will come, even from the farthest comers of the
world, whether you like it or not. For all power is
with me, and you are to me like clay in the hand of
the potter.

The “burden of silence” is a Cabbalistic concept and
was also common among the Khlyste. They had to
take an oath to keep their faith to themselves and not
to divulge it to anyone, not even at confession or under
torture, “even when they take to burning you alive or
cutting you to pieces.” The believer’s strength shows
itself not in revealing, but in concealing. Their Christs
also demanded absolute obedience and selfdenial:

If you want to follow me, you have to deny your¬
self, and this means: forget all earthly things, reason,
memory, knowledge,, conscience, property and all
virtuous exercises, practices and rules.

Walk behind me and wherever I send you or
whatever I order you to do, do it without reflection.
Whatever I demand of your property, give it with¬
out hesitation and do not dare to have a will of
your own.

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

And this sounds like the call of the “Brethren of the
Free Spirit”: “Give, give, give your home, your horse,
your goods and chattels, do not consider anything your
own, but belonging to everybody”—a call that has not
been silenced from the days of the Jewish sects of the
Essenes and Nazarens.

Strange similarities surface here between Frank and
the tsaddik Nahman of Bratslav and make them almost
appear to be kindred souls. Les extremes se touchent.
Many remarks of the tsaddik could be attributed to
Frank, and he was actually accused of being a Frankist.
He, too, demanded absolute obedience from his follow¬
ers. They had to deliver themselves into his hand for
better or worse, without looking left or right, leave aside
any doubts and rely on the wisdom of the tsaddik rather
than their own. He ordered them to appear “like one
man” three times a year before him, for just to look at
him pleased God. He imposed upon them regular taxes
and made long journeys to collect them. It was their
holy duty to buy his writings “even if they had to
pawn their last shirt.” Just to own the books without
reading them was a blessing from God and a protection
against loss of property and other misfortune. He called
himself the only true tsaddik, the others were “Jewish
devils” (shedim yehudim in Hebrew; Frank called the
tsaddiks by the same name and the early Hassidim used
it to refer to the rabbis.) He was the beginning of
salvation, the harbinger of the Messiah:

I do not know what will become of me. But this
much I know, because I had God promise it to me:
One of my descendants will be the Messiah (cf.
Frank, the father of the female Messiah.)

I am a nothing (cf. Frank, the “prostak”), but
mankind needs me, for I have come to bring them

Messianic Miiitarism

something new and wonderful. . . and if I were to
reveal myself completely, the whole world would
follow me.

If you knew why I travel from place to place, you
would kiss every inch of my footprints, for every
single step of mine is one step closer to salvation.

I am like the seed that has to putrefy in the soil
in order to blossom and become a shadow-giving
tree (a favored Hassidic parable, appearing also in
the mythology of many people in this form or that
of the sacrificed and risen God. Frank, too, compared
himself to the grain of seeds which “looks mortal,
but carries life within. The wheat can only grow
after it has been rotting under ground.”)

The tales and parables of Nahman of Bratslav also
are like those of Frank, full of mighty kings, bewitched
princes, kidnapped princesses, pirates, highwaymen and
miraculous heroes. And Frank’s dream of an eternal
Sabbath “when everybody will wear white clothes”
comes to life in J. L. Perez’ drama The Golden Chain
and the desperate outcry of the tsaddik: “Let there
always be Sabbath!”

Messianic Militarism

Fr ank organized his following into a clandestine,
highly disciplined, military “encampment,” with various
ranks for men and women alike, battle training and
regular maneuvers. He told them they would have to
take up arms before long and ordered his “apostles” to
spread the word:

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Go to the Jews and tell them: Be ready, a war
is coming. Train yourselves in warfare, also the
women and the girls and all children over six. As
it has been said: Wejissroel osso hayil —and Israel
formed an army. Then nobody will perish.

He saw himself already at the head of an army of
ten million Jews and one million gentiles, the officers
acknowledging no religion, all dressed in red, the color
of revenge. Years later, Frank’s “uhlans, hussars and
cossaks” actually wore predominantly red uniforms.

This mentality and education made many Frankists
choose a military career and often rise to high ranks.
Joseph Jakubowski and Ignace Majewski were generals
in the Polish revolutionary army of 1794, so was Jacob
Jasinski, a gifted poet and writer, who advocated a
typical Frankist libertinism and wrote biting pamphlets
against clergy and nobility. Designated dictator of Poland
by the Polish Jacobins, he was killed during the Russian
siege of Warsaw in 1794. (Also participating in the up¬
rising was a Jewish, non-Frankist brigade under the
command of Colonel Berek Josselewicz.)

Several Frankists distinguished themselves in the ser¬
vice of Napoleon Bonaparte: Jacob Lewinski, chief-of-
staff of the Polish cavalry; Alexander Matuszewicz,
general of artillery; General Jan Dembowski, later gov¬
ernor of Ferrara; and General Joseph Szymanowski. In
the insurrection of 1830, General Jan Krysinski, son
of Leib Krysa, the above mentioned adjutant of Frank,
held out against the Russians longer than any other
Polish commander; his brother Xavier was auditor-gen¬
eral of the Polish forces. Numerous Frankists fought
also in the revolution of 1863, among them General
Anthony Jezioranski; his cousin Jan belonged to the
revolutionary government whose members were all

The Inquisition Tribunal

hanged by the Russians. Adalbert (Wojciech) Jaku¬
bowski, aide-de-camp of Louis XV, was a Frankist, as
was Count Maurice Hauke (probably, in any case a
baptized Jew), who took part in the revolt of 1793, was
chief-of-staff of the Polish legion which fought under
Napoleon, and later, by appointment of Tsar Alexander
I, minister of war in the short-lived Principality of
Poland; he was killed by the Polish insurgents in 1830.
His grandson married a daughter of Queen Victoria and
became the founder of the English line of the house
Battenberg-Mountbatten. The Doenme also developed
some military talents; general Kemal Ataturk, father of
modern Turkey, was one of them.

, The army seems to have a peculiar attraction for
Jews in general. When they are allowed to become
officers or when they are on their own, like in present-
day Israel, they display extraordinary military gifts.
Many Jews were members of the general staffs of various
nations during the past two centuries.

Before the Tribunal
of the Inquisition

But back to Frank. The new splendor did not last ‘
long. His activities did not remain unnoticed, and three
months after his baptism he found himself standing as
a defendant before the tribunal of the Warsaw Inquisi¬
tion. Some Frankists had bragged about his being the
resurrected Christ, and that was enough to have him

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

accused of heresy. Frank defended himself well and
caused the Inquisitor frequent embarrassement. When
asked about his conversion from Islam to Christianity,
he said: “Had I held the Mahometan religion to be true,
I would not have accepted Christianity.”

Addressing Frank in the third person, as was the
custom with the Inquisition, the Inquisitor asked:

“Why did he give apostolic names to twelve of his
followers?”

“First of all, they were fourteen, not twelve, but two
died, so there were only twelve. Second, it was not I
who gave them the names, but they themselves; and
third, they were not apostolic names, because one was
Franeis.”

“Why did he stop preaching the holy word of the
Church to his people after he was baptized?”

“This was necessary before baptism, now it is up to
the priests.”

“Was he aware that his people believed him to be the
Messiah and what does he think himself to be? Why
did he allow them to bow before him and to sing pious
hymns, while he was chewing tobacco and sipping
coffee?”

“It is not known to me that they believed me to be
the Messiah. Had I known, I would have stopped it.
As for me, nothing eould be further from my mind. I
do not reeall them bowing to me and singing pious songs,
while I was chewing tobacco and sipping coffee.”

“Why did he let them wait on him from head to
toe, even when he was relieving himself? Why did he let
them prostrate themselves to receive his blessing?”

“It may well have been that some brother helped
me into my caftan and I let it happen because it was
out of love. It is not true that they helped me when I

The Inquisition Tribunal

was relieving myself. True it is, however, that they once
asked me to bless them, which I did without pretending
to be more than an ordinary human being.”

“Why did he lie down on his bed with outstretched
arms? Did he mean to imply by this that he was the
crucified Savior?”

“If I did it in my sleep, I knew nothing of it. I would
have been crazy to dt) it awake.”

Other questions drew from him evasive answers such
as: “I am a little weak in my head.”

The tribunal was at a loss. As a last resort, it sent
a copy of the interrogation to Rome. In the meantime,
Frank was confined to the fortified monastery of Czen-
stokhova. He was taken there in his own coach under
heavy military guard and given permission to bring along
his cook. Rome had other worries; the papacy was at a
low ebb in its power, and the case of Frank fell into
oblivion. His honorary detention dragged on for thirteen
years.

Once again his power over people asserted itself. The
bleak fortress turned residence. The garrison passed
daily in review before him, presenting arms. His wife
and daughter with a number of his followers were
allowed to join him and like Sabbatai Zevi he held court
in prison. Czenstokhova, the national shrine of Poland
where every year thousands of pilgrims gather to adore
the picture of the black madonna, Poland’s patron
saint, became also a center of pilgrimage for the
Frankists. Baptized or not, they floeked to their master,
carrying lavish gifts, just like the Hassidim to their tsad-
dik. Many moved there to be near him, and the town
became an important Frankist center next to eastern
Galicia and Warsaw. Frank’s wife bore him here three
sons, Jacob, Rochus and Joseph. She died in 1770, one

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

year after her son Jacob. Both were buried in a cave
near Czenstokhova.

Frank sent emissaries to the Jewish communities of
eastern and central Europe to win them over for his
sect, foretelling them, in 1767 and 1768, a dark future,
unless they joined him:

There is coming a time when you will be hated
by rulers and kings, also by King Frederick (of
Prussia), all lords and princes, they all, all will hate
you, and whosoever will meet a Jew, will spit at
him. . . Plagues such as the world has never seen
will be visited upon you, in all parts of Poland, in
Lithuania, Russia, Hungary, Walachia, Moldavia,
Tartary, in all the provinces of Ismael (Turkey),
in France, Germany, Prussia, in short everywhere
there are Jews. Woe, woe onto you, your wives and
your children! For there will be many dead and
nobody to bury them and the dogs will drag their
bones through the fields. If I wanted to describe
everything that awaits you, the paper would not
suffice. . . You could, however, escape this if the
law of Moses is fulfilled and you enter the holy reli¬
gion of Edom (Christianity). Whoever is a descen¬
dant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will, therefore,
have no other choice but to do just that.

Frank foretold also the imminent partition of Poland
which would (and actually did) bring him his freedom.
Betting on Russian might, he sent a delegation to Mos¬
cow to sound out the Holy Synod about a possible con¬
version of the Frankists to the Russian-orthodox religion.
When the delegation returned empty-handed, Frank ex¬
ploded in furious exasperation: “The day of revenge is
near, hidden in my heart. Remove everything and make
room for what is coming. Revenge for the agony, re¬
venge for all the spilled blood!” With the same words

The Female Messiah

(“The day of revenge is near, hidden in my heart,”
actually a saying of Isaiah) Sabbatai Zeyi comforted a
delegation of Polish Jews for the atrocities suffered by
the hordes of Chmielnitsky.

The Female Messiah

Assuming more and more liberties, Frank stopped
going to mass and confession, allegedly because of a
plot to poison him at communion, but actually because
of failing health. According to the Chronicle of the Lord
he started taking “various salts.” In order not to alarm
his people, he discovered his messianic immortality, but
started simultaneously to prepare the ground for his
successor, his daughter Eve-Avatcha, immortal as he. So
Eve Frank became a sort of counterpart to the black
madonna of Czenstokhova, and next to the cult of Mary
a cult of Eve established itself there, with Frank himself
submitting to it:

For she is the true Messiah! She will save the
world! Where is it required of the Messiah to be
a man or Jewish? The exodus from Egypt was
imperfect because the leader was a man. Did not
the prophet already say: Ki hu sera haba mimokom
akher—loT he is the seed that comes from somewhere
else?

For she is life eternal, and he who is found
worthy of seeing her will not suffer sin, disease, or
death. In order to deserve this, one has to be clean-
hearted, to deny all teachings, laws, religions, and

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

customs, and stand one step higher than the others.

I will lead you to her, provided you do all I say
until she lets me bring you before her face. . . If
you are called up, do the following: Take a bath,
cut the nails of your fingers and toes, and dress all
in white. Step up to her with a glad heart, for she
is the queen of the world, and nothing can happen
without her will. Keep your eyes closed, fall on your
face and kiss the floor. She will ask you what you
want, and you answer: ‘T have served God until
now, but from now on be you my guide!” You will
approach her, kiss her feet, and stand up; putting
one hand on your heart, you will look at her, but
with one eye only! She will call you brother and
allow you to kiss her hands. Then she will stroke
your eyes and cheeks and open all gates to you.
"You have been blind,” she will say, "but now open
your eyes and see!” And you will see what your
fathers and forefathers never were given to see. But
she will rejoice with you and lead you away all
naked. . . The earth will then be saved from all
curses and turn pure gold. There will be no more
cold or heat, but only mild weather; the roses will
bloom daily and this will last for a hundred and ten
years. There will be eternal day and no night, for
the night is the curse of the world.

For the time being, however, he withdrew the apple
of his eye from public sight, and Eva-Avatcha-Avat-
chunia spent her days behind fortress walls in the com¬
pany of fourteen playmates under the care of her father.
Only once in all those years did he make an exception
when soime young noblemen, having heard of her beauty,
asked permission to see her. He gave in to their flattery,
whereupon the young gents tried to abduct the girl, but
were foiled by the guards.

In the years of his confinement, Frank’s theology
changed. Next to the trinity there was now a foursome of

The Female Messiah

gods: the god of life, the god of wealth, the god of
death, and the god of gods or big brother above them.
The supreme commandment was the love of all men,
even the worst. Frank warned his followers against the
church:

Beware of the cross, it points here and there, and
you might lose your way, like on a crossroad.

I saw in a dream the Christ, surrounded by his
priests, sitting next to a brook of fresh, clear water.

But the brook moved away from him and came over
to me.

The soul has human form and is hidden in a
secret place. Nobody has ever possessed or seen it,
not even the patriarchs nor the kings of Israel. Man
^ feels he is missing something and does not know
what. We, however, will be full men and have a
soul.

The world is finite and God cannot enter it. All
existing things have to turn into dust and ashes
first.

The keynote of Frank’s religion, however, continued
to be lascivious sensualism. The orgiastic rituals con¬
tinued to be performed, and some new practices were
added. Thus, one day, Frank ordered two of his men “to
unite with sister Henrietta.” Another time, meeting a
widow during his morning walk on the ramparts of the
fortress, he told her: “Widow, widow, tonight you will
be comforted”—by four of the brethren, as it turned out.
One day the monks of the monastery came storming
into Frank’s quarters, demanding “with loud cries” that
boys and girls should be forbidden to spend the night
there together.

On March 12, 1771, sister Marianna came from War¬
saw “and the Lord [Frank] sucked at her breast six

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

times, whereupon she left,” as laconically reported by
the Chronicle of the Lord. The same happened to other
women. As this took place “in front of everybody,” it is
hard to tell whether it was a ritual ceremony or a po¬
pular remedy. Probably both. A Polish legend tells of a
knight who was imprisoned with his daughter who kep't
him alive with her breast milk. Similar tales are known
among other people.

This motif appears in world literature from Pliny the
Elder to Dante, Boccacio, Byron, Maupassant, and be¬
yond and can also be found in painting and sculpture.
It entered Christian mythology as Maria Lactans or
Virgo Lactifera, the Holy Virgin nourishing a dying man
with the milk of her breast (whose miraculous powers,
incidentally, may also be imbibed with a brand of Rhine
wine called Liebjrauenmilch, Holy Virgin milk).

In the meantime, the military situation of Poland dete¬
riorated, and one day the Russians appeared at the gates
of Czenstokhova. The fortress had received reinforce¬
ments and resisted the assault. Yet, some people fled the
beleaguered town, many Frankists among them. Frank
felt deserted and through a messenger, who managed
to smuggle himself out of the fortress and reach War¬
saw, he sentenced them to a mutual flogging. So strong
was his power over them tbat they submitted to his
order without resistance or exception, men and women
alike.

At long last, the fortress capitulated. Presenting him¬
self to the Russian commander as a prisoner of the
Poles, Frank was set free. The news of his liberation
reached Warsaw ahead of him. He was greeted there
jubilantly and immediately resumed his old activities.
Deepest secrecy was required now in order not to spoil
everything again:

The Female Messiah

When you meet me in town, keep walking as if
you do not know or see me. Not a word about our
plans to your wives or children, let alone to strangers.

Be careful and hide our aim behind pretty words
and meaningless phrases. Be cunning and sly like
the snakes so that we may get everything we are
after.

When you see me doing childish things, foolish
tricks, or other follies, do not turn away from me,
but hold on and stay firm and strong, because every¬
thing happens out of love for you, for your benefit
and happiness.

He received letters from abroad with invitations by
the followers of Sabbatai Zevi to join them. His own
rnessengers were held up at the border and sent back.
With Poland partitioned and the occupying powers in¬
troducing harsh measures of surveillance and oppression,
he finally decided, although with a heavy heart, to leave
Poland and move to Bruenn, the capital of the Austrian
province of Moravia, which, for the next thirteen years,
was to become the center of Frankism.

Why Bruenn?

With this move to Austria a new chapter begins in the
history of Frankism. Frank had chosen Moravia because
of the many followers of Sabbatai Zevi who lived there.
They were headed by the notorious Loebel Prossnitzer
who used to smear the four letters of the divine name
JHVH in a phosphorous substance on his chest and let
them light up in the dark before the baffled eyes of his

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

congregation. He had been in touch with Frank and
arranged for two of his emissaries to preach in the Pross-
nitz synagogue, which led to a riot in the local ghetto.
Frank picked Bruenn for his residence because it was the
home of his cousin Sheindel Hirschel. Her father, a
brother of Frank’s mother, had moved from Rzeszow in
western Galicia to Breslau and on to Prossnitz. Bom in
Breslau and known for her beauty, Sheindel was married
to the wealthy tobacco merchant Salomon Dobrushka
and was the mother of six boys and six girls. An ex¬
cellent businesswoman in her own right, she took over
her husband’s business after his death and in addition
managed to become the sole tenant of the Austrian
potash monopoly and collector of the head-tax paid
by traveling Jews. She was a great admirer of Frank and
supported him with substantial amounts of money. (In
the writings of the rabid anti-Frankist Jacob Emden she
is called “that big whore from Bmenn.”) In her house
any Frankist was welcome. Jonas Wolf Eibenschuetz,
the son of the Hamburg rabbi mentioned earlier in this
book, found a refuge there from his many creditors and
enjoyed the special favors of the lady of the house. Later,
under the name of Baron Adlersthal, he established a
Frankist community in Dresden which was a way station
for Frankist pilgrims.

Salomon Dobrushka was the first Jew to be author¬
ized to live in Bruenn. He removed the image of the
Virgin Mary from above the entrance of the house he
had bought, which led to a riot that had to be quelled
by military force. At the same time, the Creditbank of
Bruenn and the newspaper it owned were taken over by
Israel Hoenig von Hoenigsberg who, following Dob-
rushka’s example, removed the words “of our beloved

THE FAMILY DOBRUSHKA

Salomon Dobrushka, 1715-1774, married to Sheindel

Catharina Hirschel, 1735-1791.

Children:

1. Carl, 1751-1781, baptized 1764 Carl Joseph Schoen-
feld

2. Moses, 1753-1794, baptized 1775 Franz Thomas
Schoenfeld, married to Elke Joss, 1757-1801, bap¬
tized Wilhelmine

3. Gerson, 1757-1833, baptized 1775 Joseph Carl
Schoenfeld

4. Bluemele, 1758-1808, baptized 1775 Theresa Maria
Josepha Eleanora Schoenfeld

5. Sara Rosalie, 1760-1833, baptized 1791 Maria
Louisa Schoenfeld

6. Rebecca Regina, 1761-1815

7. Gitl, 1762-1793, baptized 1791 Marianna Schoenfeld

8. Joseph Naftali, 1763-1839, baptized 1775 Maximi¬
lian Schoenfeld

9. Joseph, 1764-1800, baptized 1775 Leopold Prokop
Schoenfeld

10. David, 1765-1794, baptized 1775 Emanuel Nepo-
muk Schoenfeld

IL Fradl Franziska, 1770-1795, married to Wolf Lud¬
wig von Hoenigsberg, 1764-1833

12. Ester Leopoldine, 1771-1795, baptized 1791, mar¬
ried to Francois Chabot, 1756-1794.

Lady” from both the signboard of the bank and the
front page of the paper. Dobrushka’s firstborn, Carl,
had run away from home at the age of thirteen to join
the Catholic church. In 1775, one year after their father’s

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

death, the remaining five sons and the oldest daughter,
Bluemele, also converted to Catholicism; they were
raised to nobility in 1778 under the name of von Schoen-
feld. It may be assumed that their conversion came
about upon the instigation of Frank, because the district
commander of Bruenn reported to the chancellery in
Vienna that Frank had succeeded “in converting one
or the other Jewish family to the true faith.” Four of
the brothers became subalterns in the Austrian army;
we have met the other two, the second-born and the
youngest, Moses and David, baptized Franz Thomas and
Emanuel Schoenfeld, under yet other names—Junius
and Emanuel Frey—in Paris on their way to the guil¬
lotine. Their sister Bluemele, baptized Theresa Maria
Josepha Eleonora, became the mistress of the lion of
Vienna’s high society. Count Wenzel von Paar. She took
care of her younger sisters and led three of them, Sara,
Gitl, and Ester, to the baptismal font shortly before the
death of their mother in 1791. Only two of the twelve
Dobrushka children remained Jewish, the sisters Rebecca
and Fradl.

The ties of the Dobrushka family to Jacob Frank
seem to have aroused the suspicion of the authorities.
Their first petition for the elevation to nobility remained
unanswered, and in the second one they protested their
sincerity and presented themselves as veritable Christian
martyrs, denying any intent “to remain what we are.”
The petition was addressed to’ Empress Maria Theresa
by the oldest of the brothers, Carl; to promote the case,
he said:

With regard to myself, it is a well-known fact
that, already in my early youth and out of a true
inner impulse, I went over to the holy Christian-
catholic church, abandoned my father’s house where

Why Bruenn?

I had all possible conveniences, and enlisted in the
famous infantry regiment of Count Siskowitz. After
nine years of service during which I willingly en¬
dured all the hardships of this career, I advanced to
first lieutenant, having used up the little money my
father had given me—which circumstance in no way
makes me unworthy of the sought-for honor. . . .
Concerning my brother Franz (at present adjoint to
Father Denis at the Garelh Library of the Imperial
Theresianum School), it speaks in his favor and is
the undeniable truth that he, too, adopted the holy
^ Roman Catholic religion out of a pure inner impulse.
This step made him forfeit his share in the family
^ fortune of 12,000 to 16,000 florins and also the in¬
heritance of several hundred thousand florins of his
wife, the adopted daughter and sole heiress of the
well-known Joachim Popper. Furthermore, in addi¬
tion to his wife and three children, he took with him
into the holy Christian community his younger
brothers and several servants, after having refused
an offer of 150,000 florins to desist from doing so.
Thus he sacrificed wealth, family, and everything
else in order to embrace the holy Christian religion
and has been a Christian for the past 14 months
without demanding anything. On the contrary, in
order to convert his mother, he stayed for some time
in Bruenn and spent 1,500 florins for that purpose.
Concerning my little brothers, it is true that they
showed much firmness against their mother and
other relatives, so much so that anybody learning of
their sufferings practically came to admire them as
martyrs. This heroic behavior refutes in advance the
presumption that we changed our faith for the sake
of private gains or that we would remain what we
are. . . Hence, a whole family renouncing all wealth
out of truly holy motives and having no desire but
to be honored by the raising of their social status—
the more so because there still persist many pre¬
judices which only the granting of this honor can
disperse. Should, however, the granting of same be

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

delayed or even denied, it would cause us great an¬
guish and make us the laughing stock of Jews, Chris¬
tians, and my regiment.

The patent of nobility does not go into these details
and speaks instead of the merits of the late Salomon
Dobrushka as supplier of the army and tenant of the
Moravian tobacco monopoly. It also makes laudable
mention of a recent translation by Moses Dobrushka
(Franz Schoenfeld) of a French book “which proved to
be very useful for the dissemination of our Catholic
religion” (without giving the title of this otherwise un¬
known book). As for the devotion and missionary zeal
of Franz Schoenfeld and the martyrdom of his little
brothers who, in the words of the first petition, “so to
say tore themselves out of their mother’s womb,” they
all continued to live on good terms with their mother.
Being a Frankist, she would have had no objection to
their baptism, although she herself remained Jewish.
The fact that she changed her name to Catharina does
not prove the contrary. Her five younger daughters also
changed theirs, with two of them remaining Jewish for
life, the other three for the next four years. They all
did it in compliance with the Imperial Patent of July 23,
1787, which made the Austrian Jews adopt German
names. As for Sheindel herself, she was, according to
some documents in the Austrian National Archives
(Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv), in her last years very
active in Jewish charity, such as furnishing a house for
traveling Polish Jews and providing kosher food for
Jewish prison inmates. Moreover, she was granted per¬
mission to purchase, and export for sale, the treasures
of the monasteries and churches dissolved by Joseph II,
a transaction inaccessible to a Christian and liable to
lead to excommunication.

Why Bruenn?

On the other hand, whatever the petition says about
Moses Dobrushka’s matrimony is correct. He was married
to Elke Joss, the adopted daughter of the Prague
financier Joachim von Popper who, together with Israel
Hoenig von Hoenigsberg, Dobrushka, and others, held
the Austrian tobacco monopoly in tenancy, at a joint
fee of 1.8 million florins. Being childless. Popper adopted
Elke Joss, a niece of his wife, as his daughter and sole
heiress. When however she turned Catholic, together with
her husband and children, and was baptized Wilhelmine
Schoenfeld, he disinherited her against an indemnity of
3,000 florins and put his nephew Abraham Duschenes-
Dusensy in her stead. After Popper’s death in 1795, she
/tried unsuccesfully to contest his will. Dusensy became
Catholic in 1803 and in the end the huge Popper fortune
fell to the Church.

Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-

Frey

De Luca’s Das Gelehrte Oesterreich (Vienna 1778) and
others afterwards tell the following about Moses Dob¬
rushka, evidently according to his own account: “The first
kind of education Salomon Dobrushka let his son have
consisted of talmudic studies, and as he wanted him to be¬
come a great rabbi, he removed from his schooling any¬
thing standing in the way of this goal. ... However, he
also studied Hebrew and Chaldean [i.e. Aramaic] poetry
and rhetoric, as well as German and Latin. A lucky genie

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

procured him the works of [the German-Swiss pastoral
poet] Gessner, the first reading of which caused him diffi¬
culties, but did not make him abandon these excellent
writings. He read them until he understood everything,
and they inspired him to acquaint himself with the best
poets. He persuaded his father to give him 1,500 florins
for the purchase of some good books. Acquiring knowl¬
edge of English, French, and Italian, he devoted himself
entirely to the art of poetry.”

Moses Dobrushka earned his spurs as a writer in
1774 with a book written in Hebrew and dedicated to
his father-in-law: Sefer Hasha-ashua (Book of Enter¬
tainment), a linguistic commentary to the widely known
and frequently translated Bekhinath Olam (World
Scrutiny) by Yedaya Bedersi, a Jewish philosopher of
the early fourteenth century. It is characteristic of young
Dobrushka (or, as he called himself here, Dobrushki,
the name Jacob Frank later added to his own) that he
chose for his study the work of a pessimistic rationalist
whose thoughts approach those of Duns Scotus, but who
could also write such books as Ohev Nashim (The Lady-
Lover) and an introduction to chess-playing. De Luca
calls the work of Dobrushka, obviously according to his
own inflated account, A Theory of the Beautiful
Sciences: On the Poetry of the Ancient Hebrews. At
about the same time Dobrushka published, in one vol¬
ume, three one-act pastoral plays in German, dedicated
to the Duchess Maria Josepha zu Furstenberg. The
dedication starts with these words:

It is sheer audaeity on my part to dedicate my
pastoral plays to Your Grace. Audacity in more than
one sense for me, a twig on the withered branch of
the tree of humanity, to bear fruit of common sense

Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey

and wit and to offer them to Your Grace. With the
most timid mien I introduce the children of my
rustic muse to ask Your Grace to protect them.

In the preface he declares Gessner his favored poet,
whose wit he wants to combine with the “aetheric” mind
of Wieland. Maria Josepha was a member of the Star-
Cross (Sternkreuz), ah order of noble Austrian ladies for
the promotion of prayers to the Holy Cross, virtue and
charity. The fact that Dobrushka dedicated his first Ger¬
man work to her sounds like an announcement of his
intention to change his faith. He accompanied it, so to
say, at the threshold of baptism, with A Hebrew Poetic
Translation of the Golden Sayings of Pythagoras (Prague
1775) and a Prayer or Christian Ode in Psalm Form
(Vienna 177-), both of them impossible to locate. We
have, however, his translation of King David’s war songs:
Davids Kriegsgesdnge, deutsch aus dem Grundtexte, dem
Heere Josephs, appeared in 1788 as an overture to the
war against Turkey. Little David Dobrushka tried to
emulate his big brother and also published some poems:
a seemingly endless Fragment of a Poem called Time and
a long-winded eulogy Upon the death of Frederick the
Great.

They were not exactly great poets, the brothers Franz
Thomas and Emanuel von Schoenfeld. The elder espe¬
cially wallows in superlatives; his poems are either bom¬
bastic panegyrics or furious war songs, and even his lyrics
or the “lyric monodrama” Thusnelda in Banden Roms
(Thusnelda in the Chains of Rome) sound insipid and
border on the ridiculous. As Heine may have said: “He
felt the finest feelings.”

Schoenfeld’s muses are Germania and Siona, and his
inspiration comes from “song-mighty David, this holy

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

bard of old,” and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock who, to
him, is a David Klopstock. The 22 pages of the preface
to David*s War Songs contain the following lines:

I come from cedar-girded mount Lebanon,

From tree-covered Bashan do I descend.

Klopstock, a shining meteor,

Kleist, Bodmer, Lavater—welcome!

Mendelssohn, Herder—

the last one being especially singled out because “in
the garden of Engedi under the apple tree, the love-
shudders of Shulamite, the bronze-tressed, await him.”
But next comes:

Germania! Gottes Blitz!

des deutschen Liedes Geschiitz!

Verderben um sein Haupt,
wenn es Wut und Rache schnaubt.

Germania! God’s lightning bolt,
the gun of German song!

Destruction rings her head,
foaming fury and revenge.

And in the battle song The Victory of Foksan (of
Joseph II over the Turks) he is carried away:

Wenn Deutsche bekriegen,
miissen sie siegen.

Es horchet der Tod
der Deutschen Gebot.

When Germans go to war
they cannot but win.

Death heeds
German command.

Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey

What did the world see in this kind of rubbish? After
all, it was the time of Sturm und Drang, oi young Schil¬
ler, Goethe was not court counselor yet. But the fledgling
poetaster did not join the young generation; he turned
instead to the Brahmins of the poetic establishment. Karl
Friedrich Kretschmann, the bard from Zittau, became
intoxicated with the poems of the Schoenfeld brothers
and predicted that “they are destined to propagate and
preserve the high dignity of German poetry.” Johann
Wilhelm Gleim, the nestor of the Goettinger Dichterhain,
enjoyed their songs “in a sleepless night” and greeted
them as the second pair of brothers in the Goettingen
circle: “two Stolbergs, two Schoenfelds.” Johann Hein¬
rich Voss, the renowned scholar of classics, and Karl
Wilhelm Ramler, the director of the Royal Berlin Thea¬
ter, also befriended them (all of which caused the brothers
to quietly drop their “aetheric” Wieland because he was
not well viewed among the Goettingers).

Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld was a busy man. In the
preface to David*s War Songs he complains about the
small amount of time he had for completing the transla¬
tion of the psalms which took him eleven years, the War
Songs, thirty in all, being only a part of them. (Another
part. The Seven Penitent Psalms, is preserved among
his papers in the French National Archives in Paris.)
Not a line is known to exist of the remaining ones, if
he ever translated them. The same applies, as we have
seen, to other works he claims to have written. He
seems to have been bom in this respect under an un¬
favorable star. Even his first book, the Hebrew study
mentioned earlier, is only one of fourteen chapters; the
others, he says in the preface, had to remain unpub¬
lished because of the great expense.

What robbed the future prince of poets of his precious

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

time? Certainly not his employment in the Garelli Library.
But he was also one of the founders of the freemasonic
order of the “Knights of the True Light” or “Brethren
of St. John the Evangelist of Asia in Europe” (“Asiatic
Brothers,” for short), whose lodges were scattered all
over central Europe, with the impoverished barons Hans
Carl and Hans Heinrich of Eckhoffen at the head. These
two brothers tried it first with the Rosicrucians and
alchemists, but since these did not yield any gold, they hit
upon a better idea and founded the order of the “Asiatic
Brothers,” claiming to be in possession of all the secrets
of the Cabbala. But here they needed a “Cabbalist,” and
they found him in the person of Schoenfeld-Dobrushka.
He managed to sell them a bill of goods, a hodgepodge
of Jewish-Christian symbols which turned the Cabbala
into a secret science for the forecasting of eclipses of the
sun or moon and other natural phenomena. Some gullible
persons, fascinated by the mysterious spell of the Cabbala,
actually fell for it and joined the order, among them the
future king of Prussia, Frederick Wilhelm II. However,
the “Asiatic Brothers” also had some less esoteric aims.
As the only German freemasonic order to accept Jews,
they eyed the money of Jewish nouveaux riches who
wanted to buy their way into society. Failing in this, the
latter stopped their contributions and the order went
out of existence.

In addition to the mystically tainted “Asiatic Broth¬
ers,” Schoenfeld also belonged to the Illuminates, a
rationalistic sort of higher degree of freemasonry. How
he managed to reconcile these different philosophies with
each other is his business. In any case, they did not
prevent him from making money as a purveyor of the
Austrian army in the war against Turkey. He could
ignore any scruples he may have had, because the

Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey

Illuminates, although antimonarchists, made an exception
of the liberal, anticlerical Joseph II and actually sup¬
ported him. And the fact that Schoenfeld enriched him¬
self in his dealings with the army was a part of the
game. Leopold II, the brother and successor of Joseph
II, also made use of Schoenfeld’s services as his banker
and counselor; Schoerffeld accompanied him in August
1791 on his infamous journey to Pillnitz where the Austro-
Prussian intervention against France was decided. From
this time stem Schoenfeld’s odes Upon the Death of
Maria Theresa and Royal Entry of Leopold II into
Vienna. (At Leopold IPs coronation in Frankfurt, Jacob
Frank, now Baron Jacob Joseph Frank-Dobrushki, was
seated among the notables and caused a big sensation
with his oriental splendor.) From Pillnitz, Schoenfeld
traveled via Berlin and Hamburg to Strasbourg, sup¬
posedly as a secret agent of the Emperor, with orders
to report about the situation in France. The Paris police
accused him of espionage, and it was rumored among
the “Asiatic Brothers” that “he had secret instructions
from Vienna for Paris.” In his eulogy for the brothers
Schoenfeld, their friend, the above-mentioned Kretsch-
mann, claims to know that they went to Paris “either
with instructions or on their own” to rescue Marie An¬
toinette. A similar assumption is made by G. Lenotre
in his book Le Baron de Batz, in which they are pre¬
sented as accomplices in the baron’s unsuccessful attempt
to abduct the queen. However, in their trial in Paris
there was no talk of that sort. Leopold II died shortly
after Schoenfeld’s arrival in France and the conservative
Franz II did away with the liberal reforms of his two
predecessors, also refusing to pay their debts. Yet
Schoenfeld was not only a confidant of Leopold, but also
his creditor. In his deposition at the Paris trial he claim-

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

ed that the Emperor owed him 500,000 florins. And
so Saul turned Paul and the zealous courtier Franz
Thomas von Schoenfeld became Junius Brutus Frey,
sworn enemy of all tyrants. There is more to it, as will
be seen later.

The Messiah in Bruenn

In the month of March, 1773, “the neophyte and
merchant” Jacob Joseph Frank and his daughter crossed
the Prusso-Austrian border near Troppau on their way
to Bruenn accompanied by 18 domestics; 2 chamber¬
maids, 2 washerwomen, 1 secretary, 2 cooks, 1 boy in
the kitchen, 1 horseman, 1 haiduk, 1 footman, 1 wood¬
cutter and 4 coachmen, as they are faithfully listed by
name and occupation in the “consignation” of the district
commander. Frank’s two sons remained in the care of
the Warsaw Frankists. The Bruenn museum preserves
the Russian, Austrian and Prussian travel permits, the
latter reassuring whomever it may concern that “there is
here [in Warsaw] a clean and invigorating air and, thank
God, not a trace of contagious disease.”

Frank bought a mansion in Bruenn and furnished it
luxuriously from the lavish contributions of his follow¬
ers. “Barrels of gold” were brought into town under the
heavy military escort of his own men. There was also
a splendid coach-and-six for himself, another for his
daughter. He organized the growing number of his young
adherents into a military force on horseback, ordering

The Messiah in Bruenn

them “to learn how to shoot from the saddle and fight
with sabre and lance.” He probably intended to offer
this force of several hundred men to the Habsburgs in
their war against Turkey, in return for permission to
establish the vassal state he did not obtain in Poland.
He ruled his army with an iron fist, and Moses Dob-
rushka alias Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld apparently
knew it firsthand, as the following will show.

Frank seemed to have taken a special liking to his
second cousin. His high-sounding title and his reputa¬
tion as a confidant of the Emperor must have made
a deep impression on the “prostak”—so much so that
hQ is' supposed to have envisioned him as his suc¬
cessor alongside his daughter, in place of his not so
promising sons. However, nothing came of it. The
Chronicle of the Lord reports that on October 20, 1782,
“Peter Jakubowski and Paul Pawlikowski were punished,
and the protest raised by a certain Schoenfeld caused the
one-year imprisonment of the obstinate [fellow].” This
is the only time the name Schoenfeld appears in Frankist
writings and it can only refer to Franz Thomas, because
the older Carl was no longer alive and the younger
ones were serving in the Austrian army at the time
away from Bruenn. It is not clear from the brief report
whether the two events hang together: whether Schoen¬
feld was imprisoned in retribution of his protest against
the jailing of the two. The Catholic freemason and theos-
ophist Joseph Franz Molitor, in a memorandum of 1829,
refers to an imprisonment of Schoenfeld in Bruenn in
1784. It is, however, improbable that as important a
person as Schoenfeld would really have been jailed,
and for a year at that. Perhaps the obstinate fellow of
the Chronicle was not Schoenfeld, but somebody else,
and Schoenfeld’s protest caused the other person’s arrest.

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

This would make Schoenfeld an informer. Molitor calls
him “a highly gifted, but dissolute man” who “behaved
in a most indecent manner” and therefore had to be
removed from the order of the “Asiatic Brothers” after
they had paid off all his debts. Be that as it may, a
brilliant career had opened up before him, he was rich
and respected, and had free access to the Emperor. So
why should he submit to Frank’s dictates and follow in
his footsteps? He was playing for higher stakes.

So was Frank. He gained access to the Viennese court
and on March 19, 1775, he and his daughter were
received in audience by Joseph II, the next day by
Empress Maria Theresa who, on that occassion, let
him kiss her hand and introduced the members of her
family to him, as The Chronicle of the Lord con¬
descendingly acknowledged. The monarchs saw in Frank
a willing helper in their attempts to solve the Jewish
question—the Empress by way of baptism, her son and
coregent by means of liberal reforms (such as his Edict
of Tolerance). The young, already twice widowed Em¬
peror, however, was much more impressed by sultry
Eva’s dark eyes, and her father knew how to take
advantage of it. He rented a luxurious flat on the Graben
in Vienna and showed himself frequently with his exotic
entourage to the astonished Viennese who admired the
mysterious man in Turkish dress, the apparent favorite
of the Emperor. Frank felt so strong in the saddle that
he applied for the title of count, but even Eva’s pas¬
sionate eyes could not secure it for him. So, on his
own authority, he called himself Baron Jacob Joseph
von Frank-Dobrushki, not entirely without justification,
having been raised to the peerage at his baptism.

After a four-month stay in Vienna, father and daugh¬
ter returned to Bruenn, without giving up the contact

The Messiah in Bruenn

with the imperial court. Frank had his daughter take
French and piano lessons, and accompanied her on her
frequent trips to Vienna and Laxenburg Castle, the
Emperor’s summer resort. He must indeed have been
standing in high esteem, because accusations against him
(like the one by the mentioned former rabbi Galinski)
either remained unanswered or were rejected. When the
Russian archduke, later Tsar Paul I, visited Vienna in
1783, the Ejmperor insisted upon taking his guest to
Bruenn to be introduced to Eva Frank. Thirty years
later^ in 1813, Alexander I also paid a visit to Eva
Frank, probably because of his mystical bent and his
attempts at christianizing the Russian Jews and settling
them as Judeo-Christians in the Crimea. When he de¬
parted, he left behind a generous amount of money. Eva
was, at the time, in her late fifties, and it was her small¬
est sin that she passed herself off as being five years
younger. From this time on, she signed her name “Eva
Frank, E.R.” or simply “Eva Romanovna,” and had her
tableware engraved with a crown and the monogram E.R.

Frank’s health kept deteriorating. The earlier trou¬
bles were aggravated by a hernia and he complained
about spells of weakness. He showed himself less fre¬
quently to the numerous pilgrims who came to see him
and had to approach him on their knees and kiss his
feet. While regularly attending church, he used to hold
his own services outside of town in an open field. There
he would throw himself on the ground, face down with
arms outstretched, whispering ‘ a prayer or remaining
silent. In his book about the Jewish sects, published in
1823, Peter Beer describes this service:

When he drove to his service, his carriage was
drawn by magnificent horses and surrounded by
some 10 to 12 horsemen, dressed the uhlan-way in

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

gold, green and red, their pikes surmounted by
gilded eagles, stags or suns and moons. The coach
was followed by a rider on a splendid horse, decor¬
ated wth many tiny bells, who carried a kind of
watering pot with which he sprinkled the ground
where Frank had prayed. The purpose of this cere¬
mony is unknown, as it does not exist in the Jewish,
Christian or Mahometan religions.

(The purpose of this ceremony was much more prosaic
than the puzzled reporter imagined. In another report
the rider on the splendid horse is simply called “the
waterman” who had to spray the dusty road.)

The Messiah —
a Capitalist

Frank s extravagant life and the maintenance of some
thousand people absorbed enormous amounts of money,
and as the barrels of gold” did not always arrive in
time, he was on the lookout for a steady income. And
indeed, Frank was, with Hoenigsberg, Popper, Do-
brushka et al., a tenant of the Austrian tobacco mono¬
poly, to the tune of 100,000 florins, which yielded him
a yearly dividend of some 80,000 florins. He invested
also in the fez manufacture of his Bruenn neighbors, the
brothers Koffiler, which had, thanks to his connections,
a huge market in Turkey. But when the lucrative tobacco
monopoly was taken over by the government in 1783 and
the fez factory folded during the war against the Turks,

The Messiah — a Capitalist

Frank was left high and dry. He installed in his house an
alchemist laboratory which did not produce gold, but a
health elixir, the so-called Gold Drops, for which he
charged exorbitant prices. But even this was not enough,
and the Messiah had to ask for credit from the local
butchers, bakers, and candlestickmakers, which was
granted readily. Then a new shipment of money would
arrive and keep him'going a little longer. Only once,
when he was at the end of the rope, did he decide on the
spur of the moment to go with his daughter to Laxenburg
Castle and ask the Emperor for help. Joseph II, in the
meantime, had become tired of the oriental beauty, after
all it'was eleven years since he had seen her first; he no
longer was the “cold fish” the court ladies used to smirk
about, and Eva had passed her prime. They found the
Emperor in excellent humor in the midst of his ladies.
In response to Frank’s plea he advised him to dissolve
his household, sell everything, and pay his debts with the
proceeds; any balance the Emperor would be ready to
pay.

Deeply disappointed, the Franks returned home. Frank
dismissed the governess who had taught his daughter
good manners. The time had passed when the “holy
virgin” used to ride at the head of her dashing uhlans
and hussars. Frank longed for his sons in Warsaw, and
childhood memories moved him to tears, especially on
the Jewish holidays:

Today is Yom Kippur. Let us sing the old songs
and honor the memory of our fathers, grandmothers
and ancestors!

Hanukkah is eoming. We will light the candles,
every day one more, and look forward gladly to the
coming of the Messiah! [He must have forgotten
that he was the one.]

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

The gloomy mood had bad effects on the health of
“the Lord.” The Chronicle reports “bleedings,” and sev¬
eral sisters were summoned from Warsaw “for his
nourishment.” But this did not improve his financial
status. Frank sent distress signals in all directions,
pawned his table silver and the equipment of his army
—all that was not enough to still the creditors who
beleaguered his house, demanding cash. In response, he
ordered his secretary to tell them that he was going to
leave town for good:

For several years my master has been living in
this town. With your own eyes you saw how the
town grew in population and buildings. . . Now,
when my master goes away, this street where we
live will become a desert, with no houses or people,
no gardens or sidewalks. Grass will grow in the
streets. . . nobody will live here and whoever drives
by will spit and laugh at this place.

At the last minute, however, help arrived. The Pross-
nitz community came to the rescue with a considerable
amount of money, with more to follow soon from War¬
saw and Istambul. Frank was jubilant: “Rejoice, broth¬
ers! King Messiah is here, let us light candles!” he ex¬
claimed, and barely standing on his feet, he tried a
little dance, supported by two of his disciples.

The next morning notices appeared on the street
corners of Bruenn, calling all creditors of “the court”
to come and receive with interest what was due to them.
They came and saw to their horror the servants busy
packing: Frank had made his threat come true. Before
he left, he demanded and received from the city council
a certificate to the effect that he had fully satisfied his
creditors and that he left town with his daughter and
domestics by his own will and to the great regret of the

In Prague and in America

inhabitants whose benefactor he had been for the past
thirteen years. As a farewell gift, he had a large sum
distributed among the poor. He left town on February
10, 1786, and arrived in Vienna two days later. There
he was joined by his two sons who had journeyed to
Vienna from Warsaw where they had been cared for
by the Warsaw Frankists. The young gentlemen had been
given an exquisite education with coach and horses and
had been introduced to Warsaw society at balls and other
functions.

This time Frank stayed in Vienna for about two
years. He was again wallowing in money and tried to gain
access to the court, but he was no longer welcome
there. So he looked for another place to live and found
what he wanted in the town of Offenbach, near Frank¬
furt on the Main, Germany, where he purchased the
castle of the impoverished Duke of Isemburg. He moved
there in 1788, and here the last act of Frank’s life is
played out, though not the last in the history of Frank-
ism.

Frankists in Prague
and in America

The amazing point about the ups and downs in
Frank’s life, which have been only briefly sketched here,
is not so much his desperate struggle to keep his head
above water, as the unshakable loyalty of his followers;
with few exceptions, they stood by him, even after his
death, whether baptized or not. Frank complained time
and again that those of his supporters who remained

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Jewish had deserted him and were responsible for his
failures. “The work of my hands drowns into the sea,
and it is your fault. Your heads ought to be tom off for
it,” he once let fly at some of them who had come to
see him. Yet, the Jewish Frankists let nobody outdo
them, especially when it came to money. Just as Chris¬
tianity was a cloak for the baptized Frankists (and for
the Marranos), so Judaism was for the Jewish followers
of Frank. The former were practicing Catholics out¬
wardly; the latter obeyed all Jewish customs and com¬
mandments. But just as the Christian Frankists (and
the Marranos) aroused the wrath of the Church, so the
Jewish Frankists aroused that of the Synagogue. (The
Marranos were not even safe on the Jewish side; so
great was the number of Jewish informers in the ser¬
vice of the Inquisition that the Hebrew word for in¬
former, malshin, entered the Spanish language as malsin
and malsinar.) While the baptized Frankists, like the
Marranos, were pseudo-Christians, the non-baptized
Frankists were pseudo-Jews.

Characteristic of the latter were the Prague Frank¬
ists, to whom the wealthiest and most respected families
of that town belonged. Their leaders were the important
merchants Jonas and Aaron Baer Wehle, in whose house
the sectarians met daily for the study of the Cabbala,
their learned discussions being a far cry from the wild
gatherings of the Polish Frankists. Their esoteric theo¬
logy is best presented in the last will of Gottlieb Wehle,
Aaron Baer’s son, who died in New York in 1881.
According to this document, the Prague Frankists
believed

that man, being image and masterpiece of God,
will return to the perfect state, as he was when he
left the Creator’s hand; that he will be free from all

100

In Prague and in America

sickness of body, mind and soul; that he will be again
innocent as before the Fall, free from vice and sin. . .
Moreover, as God acts only indirectly, a chosen,
consecrated Messiah is necessary as deputy of his
highest Master. As now, according to the cabbalistic
principles, man is only the tool of Providence
through which it acts, therefore the smallest act of
one chosen for thi§ highest charge may be of great¬
est importance. Thus these ill-reputed gentle-folk
[a reference to the hostility of the rabbis towards
die Frankists] endeavoured to prepare and qualify
for this great aim and purpose by the highest moral
standards. They welcomed the misinterpretation of
fheir belief as an opportunity for bringing a sacrifice
for their high aspirations, and indeed did so on
/ the altar of their creed.

Prominent among the Frankists of Bohemia and Mor¬
avia were the families Hoenigsberg, Dobrushka, Porges,
Bondi, Brandeis, Mauthner, Goldmark, Dembitz, Schwa-
bacher, and Licht^nberg. A number of them emigrated
in 1848 to the United States, carrying the Frankist tradi¬
tion of intermarriage with them. Their most famous
descendant was the late Justice and leading Zionist, Louis
Dembitz Brandeis, married to Alice Goldmark of an¬
other Frankist family. His mother was a sister of Gottlieb
Wehle. Like other Americans of Frankist descent,
Brandeis considered Eva Frank a saint and had her
picture on his desk. Another member of the U.S. Su¬
preme Court, Benjamin N. Cardozo, had among his
ancestors one of the most prominent supporters of Sab-
batai Zevi. One of the Schwabachers was the eminent
New York lawyer who won the billion dollar suit before
the U.S. Supreme Court for the railroads against the
American government after World War 1. The atheist
German philosopher Fritz Mauthner came from a Frank-

101

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

ist family in Moravia; his grandfather was an officer of
Eva Frank’s body guards.

Contrary to the Polish Frankists, who mainly came
from the poor and uneducated, those of Prague belonged
to the rich and highly educated, with several physicians
among them. Yet they went on frequent pilgrimages to
Frank, as did their fellow-Frankists in Poland, or as the
Hassidim went to their tsaddik. Jonas Wehle once took
his son-in-law Loew Hoenig von Hoenigsberg on such a
pilgrimage and the latter returned all bewildered by the
rituals and ceremonies of “the court.” The pilgrims had
to approach “divine Eva” on their knees and elbows
(“like dogs did they crawl before her,” in the words of
Eva’s lady-in-waiting, Paulina Pawlowska.) Sheddin]^
tears of joy, they deposited gifts and money at her feet,
although the tears were not always pure joy, as the
Franks, claiming divine command, did not hesitate to rob
their visitors of their last pennies. Some Frankists testified
before a rabbinical court at Fuerth, Germany, that one
Mendel Yitshin had to give up “many thousands of
florins.” The same happened to Rosl Eger, Jonas
Wehle’s sister; although an admirer of Frank, she resisted
at first, but then “was forced” to hand over her money.
The Wehle family once was ordered to procure 3,000
florins within three days; Aaron Baer Wehle actually
delivered the money to Eva Frank and prostrated him¬
self before her, moved to tears for being blessed to see
her with his own eyes. This elicited from her the affable
words: “What does he cry about? I am a poor girl.”
Salomon Zerkowitz had his beard forcibly shaved off
on the Sabbath and had to pay for this “privilege” 660
florins cash, a promissory note of 2,000 florins, and all
the gold and silver he had with him. A student from
Prague was relieved of his last twenty florins. And one

102

In Prague and in America

day, it is reported, fifty Jewish-Christian families arrived
in the Austrian province of Bukovina. They said they
belonged to a sect of so-called Abrahamites and “had
in their credulity given all their money to the chieftain
of the sect, a fanatic and cheat by the name of Frankl
[sic] in Offenbach, and now that they had lost every¬
thing had come to the^Bukovina to recover financially.”
In Prague, like everywhere else, Frank found his most
eager supporters among women, a cause of marital
conflicts and fistfights in the women’s section of the
Prague synagogue. On Yom Kippur, 1800, Frank’s son
Roch retired with three young women to his room “for
the ceremonies.” Three sentries, rifles cocked, guarded
the door, while inside “all sort of lascivious and in¬
describably evil things went on.” Afterwards one of the
three women wrote to her father in Prague how ex¬
tremely happy she was to have been chosen. The Prague
Frankists also sent their sons to Offenbach, where they
joined Frank’s army. We owe this information to two
of these young men, the brothers Moses and Leopold
Porges; they became suspicious that “an unheard-of
swindle” was going on there and ran away (see Ap¬
pendix). The irate Prague rabbis set the ghetto mob
against the Frankists, and the police had to quell the
resulting riots.

The New Jerusalem

Frank’s entry into Offenbach was spectacular. First
came two armed heralds on horseback, followed by a

103

THE MILITANT MESSIAH
group of quick-stepping pages in green-gold livery. Two
coaches and a convoy of vehicles carrying women and
children followed. The rear was brought up by a detach¬
ment of Frank’s mounted soldiers. From the first coach
stepped “the baron” himself, a commanding figure,
flanked by his two sons and wearing a long, red coat, a
high fur cap on his head, and a huge diamond-studded
star on his chest. From the second coach emerged Eva
Frank, in a sky-blue, pearl-embroidered silk dress, sur¬
rounded by her ladies-in-waiting.

Frank had made his dream come true. He was a
sovereign with a castle and army of his own. Some
pint-size German rulers did not have much more. Yet,
he was a king without a country. His empire extended
over a bare two acres and consisted mainly of the army’s
parade grounds and the adjacent area. Over this realm
he ruled with absolute authority, an oriental potentate
in the midst of great luxury. Sentries stood at every,
door, barring all unauthorized persons. Frank received
his special guests in an incense-filled room, seated cross-
legged on an ottoman, smoking a hookah, surrounded by
pages, and with an interpreter at his side. (Frank spoke
only Ladino and Yiddish, with some Turkish and Ger¬
man.)

The public had only an occasional glimpse of Frank
when he drove out on his way to mass or to his own
service “with a splendor comparable only to the mighty
of the Orient.” In church “he did not bare his head and
prayed neither kneeling nor standing nor sitting, but
prostrate in the oriental way.” Outwardly, the Frankists
behaved like good Catholics “leading a quiet and peace¬
ful life at the expense of their chief; they formed a small
world of their own, none of them earning a livelihood.
Sabbataian Jews bearing gifts came in great numbers on

104

The New Jerusalem

pilgrimage to Offenbaeh, and the town profited from
such visitors,” as reported by a contemporary chronicler.
The people of Offenbach left the “Polack prinee”
(“Polackenfuerst”) alone and granted him a kind of
exterritoriality. Frank seemingly had “jurisdiction and
police power over his subjects and enjoyed the complete
independence of a sovereign.” (It should be noted, how¬
ever, in this connection that Offenbach was a traditional
refuge for all sorts of dissidents and persecuted people.
The tolerant dukes of Isemburg had granted asylum to
Huguenots, Anabaptists, and Jews, and the reigning duke
was a Freemason and Illuminate.)

The German public was mystified by what was going
on in their midst and wanted to know more about it.
Contemporary newspapers occasionally published articles
about the Offenbach court, but all they reported was
what met the eye. What went on behind the walls of
the castle, nobody knew. Thus in February, 1800, the
Weimar Journal des Luxus und der Moden published
two correspondences from Offenbach under the title “The
continuous masquerade,” which said in part:

Shortly after his arrival in Offenbach, Frank asked
for permission to have some of his people join him.
Before long, he had some 1,100 people with him,
who hved together like a brotherhood and, it cannot
be denied, distinguished themselves by their good
and clean morals. .. . And now there started the most
colorful and curious masquerade of Chinese, Turk¬
ish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian and who knows what
other costumes with all the males participating, the
females wearing ordinary German dress. Frank and
his followers apparently belonged to the Catholic
Church, but observed many other religious customs
besides, such as men and women bathing daily in
the river and attending prayer meetings after-

105

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

wards. . . . These people were never short of money
which arrived, nobody knew where from, not in bills
of exchange, but in cash transported under military
escort. After Frank’s death the shipments declined,
causing some shortages to the extent that two hun¬
dred of his people had to be sent back to Poland at
the expense of the Duke. Recently, however, Frau-
lein Frank resumed the old ways, the present mas¬
querade being even more colorful and fantastic. In
addition to the guards, she is always accompanied
to Church by a beautihil little boy dressed as Amor
in white silk with quiver and arrows, a man wearing
a golden wolfs head, another with antlers and a
third one with a golden crescent on his chest, as
well as a group of young women dressed like
Amazons with silver suns on their breasts. All of
them, even her two so-called brothers, pay homage
to her. Recently she ordered those employed in the
local factories to quit work, which they dutifully
did, preferring to suflEer want at her court. This must
be a religious sect, because they have invited the
Jews to adopt their creed and join them. With this
kind of living and more and more money shipments
failing to arrive, the situation of the commune, as
could be expected, has gone from bad to worse.
People who are in the know estimate the debts of
Fraulein Frank at 800,000 florins. Several merchants
have gone bankrupt on this account and now live at
the court, eating at her table. . . . This is all I could
find out about this strange matter. It can be seen
here by thousands of people, but I have not been
able to get to the bottom of it.

A fantastic image of Frankist histrionics is mirrored
in Bettina von Arnim’s Goethe*s Correspondence with
a Child. Like most of this lady’s letters, it is a product
of her vivid imagination, though it contains a grain of
truth:

106

Goethe, Mickiewicz, Casanova

Since you left, the life style of the town’s popula¬
tion has playfully changed over into the miraculous,
which has to be seen in order to be believed. . .
A mystic nation walks around among us in wonder¬
fully colored costumes. Long-bearded men, young
and old, in purple, green and yellow gowns, hand¬
some youths in close-fitting, gold-trimmed clothes,
one leg green, the other yellow or red, galloping on
fiery steeds with silver bells around their necks or
playing guitars and flutes as they stroll through the
evening streets on their way to sweetheart’s window.
Imagine this with the mild summer sky arching over
all and flowing around the edges of a blooming,
dancing, music-making world. Imagine the silver-
, bearded prince of this people attired in white and
seated in front of his palace on a pile of magnificent
rugs and pillows, surrounded by his entourage. . .
Little boys bringing golden bowls, while music re¬
sounds through the open windows of the palace. . .
As children we used to stop in passing and listen to
the singing and playing.

Goethe, Mickiewicz,
Casanova

Goethe knew of Frank. Goethe’s papers include a
notice about Frank with a postscript in Goethe’s hand:
“How easily helpless people let themselves be fooled by
clever cheats.” It never occurred to Goethe that he was
listening to a Frankist when, in 1813, he attended a
concert of the famous pianist Maria Szymanowska in
Marienbad. She was the granddaughter of Frank’s adju¬
tant Shlomo Schorr, baptized Wolowski, and the wife of

107

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

the Frankist Joseph Szymanowski. Goethe was moved to
tears and felt “like a clenched hand that unfolds.” He
had himself presented to the artist, went on walks with
her and “fell in love with that person.” Maria’s sister,
Kasimira Wolowska, also enchanted him (as well as
Wilhelm von Humboldt) with her beauty, and Goethe
wrote three short love poems in praise of the sisters.

Maria’s daughter Celina was the wife of Poland’s great
son, the poet Adam Mickiewicz, himself of Frankist
parentage. In his Dziady (Forefathers' Eve), a mystical
drama interwoven with Frankist motives, Mickiewicz
makes veiled hints that he is the Messiah who, at the
head of Poland and “her elder brother,” the Jewish
people, would lead mankind to freedom, an idea vividly
reminiscent of Frank.

Frank was not an unusual phenomenon in his time.
After all, the eighteenth century was not only the age
of reason, but also of the mysticism of Saint-Martin
and Swedenborg, the magnetism of Mesmer, the demonic
occultism of the Marquis de Sade, and the blossoming
of freemasonry; furthermore, adventurers like Cagliostro
and Casanova had an easy field. Frank has been called
“the Jewish Cagliostro.” Although Cagliostro spent some
time with the Offenbach Illuminates, there is no indica¬
tion that the two ever met. But Casanova was in touch
with Eva Frank and so perhaps with her father also. In
the draft of a letter (which itself is not extant) he
wrote on September 28, 1793, to the “divine virgin”:

In your letters, dear lady, you talk of disclosing
the mystery surrounding your existence. I feel duty-
bound to inform you directly of the truth which will
give you a better idea of myself than our old ac¬
quaintance so far has been able to do. I have for a
long time been in the possession of the number Kab-

108

Goethe, Mickiewicz, Casanova

EU which gives me, in arabic numerals, an answer
to any question I put down in the same kind of
numerals. I believe you know that the Kab-Eh
(meaning divine secret) is not the Kab-Ala, which
consists of more or less dark explanations. What I
have, is a true oracle that always tells me the truth,
although often in a veiled form. I would not dare
give you a sample of it without having received per¬
mission to do so. r have asked my oracle for it in
order to convince you that nothing concerning the
deceased (your father) or yourself is unknown to
me. This should not irritate you as it does not change
my opinion about, nor my respect for you. Here are
the answers I received several days after your
second letter and the exact wording of the questions
I asked the spirit, who is at my service and who an¬
swers only in numbers: Tell me when Eva Frank
will be ready to divulge to me the secret she believes
I do not know, and what are her intentions after
having neglected me for so many years! Answer: I
am well informed about her, but she will not admit
it because divulging the secret would belie her
dearest hopes. She also fools herself about the essen¬
tial. Second question: Tell me exactly what this
essential is! Answer: The unequivocal aim of one of
her two advisers.

Here follows a vague explanation of Casanova’s num¬
ber-mysticism with the ambiguous assurance that Eva
may safely challenge this person whose identity is not
disclosed. The letter concludes:

Independently thereof and out of pure amity, dear
lady, kindly notify me at what bank to deposit to
your order three hundred florins. Be advised that I
am guided solely by the wish to be of some assis¬
tance to you and by the pleasure it gives me to
oblige myself to you at so low a cost. (The modesty
of the amount relieves you from worrying about its
repayment.)

109

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

The last sentence is crossed out, and whether Casa¬
nova ever made good on his promise is unknown. He
seemed to have had the intention because, at about that
time, he borrowed an equivalent amount from a Jewish
moneylender in Prague, who later sued him for repay¬
ment.

The secret Casanova spoke about refers to the rumors
Frank had been spreading that he was the dethroned
Tsar Peter III who had been declared dead, and Eva
was the daughter of the Tsarina Elizabeth.

Surrounded by a mysterious aura of fame, the Franks
ruled unmolested and with relentless rigor over their
realm. The brothers Porges testified during their inter¬
rogation in Fuerth about an incident that happened one
day in Offenbach. For having dared to grumble, several
people were chained and thrown into the dungeons of
the castle, where they were beaten every day and given
nothing to eat but bread and water. An eyewitness re¬
ports the following incident, typical of the despotic
regime at the court of the “Polack prince”: “One of the
women came running out of the Polish house, her hair
wildly streaiming, the guards after her. Her desperate
resistance in a public place almost caused a riot. The
mob pushed towards the house where one could hear the
unfortunate creature screaming, but kept a respectful
distance as if glued to the ground.” The witness was told
by the police that “no policeman or judicial person was
permitted to enter the house under any circumstance.”

On the whole, however, the “Offenbach Poles” lived
a quiet and peaceful life, partly in the castle, partly in
the town and its environs. “They enjoyed the most
blameless reputation and never caused any trouble with
their neighbors.” Frank’s court gained fame by the
presence of one of Poland’s overlords, Martin Lubo-

110

Goethe, Mickiewicz, Casanova

mirski, who married one of Eva’s ladies-in-waiting. Eva
was “a true benefactor of the Catholic Church” and
was popular because of her charity.

Frank was making fewer and fewer public appear¬
ances. He suffered a stroke in December, 1788, and three
months later a second, but recovered and pulled him¬
self together for new prophecies. The French Revolution
had confirmed his predictions of the destruction of State
and Church, and he saw a new chance for the conver¬
sion and settlement of the Jews. Yet, the end was near.
One day he called his assistants to his bed and told
them:

I am very weak. My time has come to taste death.
The old has to step aside and make room for the
new. But my strength will renew itself and rise into
the air like an eagle.

Christ said he had come to free the world from
the claws of Satan. But I say unto you, I have come
to free the world from all laws and commandments.
Everything has to be destroyed for the good God to
show himself.

This was to be his legacy; a few days later, on De¬
cember 10, 1791, a third stroke put an end to his stormy
life.

The funeral took place on December 12. First every¬
body approached the deceased and, in Jewish fashion,
touched his feet, asking forgiveness. Then the proces¬
sion began. As he came, so he went—with pomp and
circumstance:

First there were two hundred women of all ages,
dressed in white, their hair braided with white rib¬
bons, carrying burning candles. Next came the
corpse dressed in an ermine-trimmed, red silk-gown.

111

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

in a coffin upholstered with white silk and decorated
with golden tassels, carried by white-clad servants.
They were followed by his two sons on foot and the
“divine Eva” in a densely veiled equipage drawn by
four horses and surrounded by twenty young women
of Eva’s Amazon guards. Finally seventy of Franks
body-guards and all the other male members of the
brotherhood, carrying flaming torches and wearing
white ribbons around their heads and white crepe
on their arms. Arriving at the burial place, the whole
assembly broke out in loud lament and Anally every¬
body threw a handful of earth into the grave. All
the bells of Offenbach were ringing that day, in¬
cluding the Lutherans, who also aecompanied the
funeral train with music.

No clergyman was in attendance.

Among the mourners was Frank’s second cousin Franz
Thomas von Schoenfeld.

Decline

With Frank’s death began the decline of Frankism.
Neither Eva nor her brothers had the magnetic power
of their father to command faith and obedience. Still,
the Offenbach center continued for another twenty years.
Outwardly everything went on as before. Eva, a beauti¬
ful greyhound at her feet, continued to receive her
visitors, and the “army” went through its daily routine;
but the splendor was gone and the uniforms became
threadbare. The student David Hofsinger who, together

112

Decline

with the Forges brothers, had escaped Eva’s court,
testified in Fuerth that once, after the arrival of some
money from Prague, all male personnel received new
trousers.

Poverty stalked the castle. The lady and her brothers
still feasted on royal dishes, but ordinary people received
a watery vegetable soup from the communal kitchen.
In Poland, protests were raised against the great amounts
of money shipped out of the country, and one day a
shipment of 40,000 ducats was confiscated by the border
guards. The “court” again took to living on credit. Con¬
vinced by the visit of Alexander I of Eva’s royal ex¬
traction, the Offenbach merchants and the Mainz and
l^rankfurt bankers, among them old Rothschild, let
themselves be put off and renewed the promissory notes
time and again until the debt exceeded one million
florins.

In their distress, the Franks took refuge in an old
idea and, as their father had done, sent an appeal to
the Jewish communities of Austria, Prussia, and Poland.
The “army” was relieved from drilling to copy these
letters, which, in order to avoid undesired attention,
were mailed not in Offenbach but in neighboring towns.
Most of them failed to reach their destination. Intercepted
by the censors, they highly alarmed the authorities. The
letters talked about abolishing all existing laws and
about a conspiracy by the monarchs of Europe to kill
the Jews, whose only salvation was in joining “our sect,
called Edom.” The letters were signed by the three elders
of the sect: “Franz Wolowski, as Jew Shloime, son of
Elisha Schorr of Rohatyn; Michael Wolowski, as Jew
Nuta, son of Elisha Schorr of Rohatyn; and Andreas
Dembowski, as Jew Yeruhem, son of Haim Lipman of
Czarnokozienice.” These letters just contained the old

113

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Frankist slogans, but now they sounded like a call to
revolution. Europe’s mighty were haunted by the Jacobin
phantom and saw in the name “Sect of Edom” a cover
for the French Jacobin club, the name of the founder,
Jacob Frank, being sufficient proof. Their fears were
heightened by the red ink in which the letters were
written and by a denunciation addressed to the Prague
city commander. Count Vratislav, by an anonymous
informer, in all probability Rabbi Elasar Flekeles, who
tried in the following manner to connect the Frankists
with the French Revolution:

At the outbreak of the pernicious French freedom
when so many things fell apart and many detestable
organizations and secret societies came to the sur¬
face, there appeared also to exist an understanding
between the Frankist and some French societies. The
name of Franc alone aroused suspicion as being a
sign of their connection. . . . One of his strongest
supporters, a Jewish native of Bruenn by the name
of Moses Dobrushka, who was baptized twenty-two
years ago under the name of Schoenfeld, went to
Offenbach after the death of said Franc. He was
supposed to take the place of the deceased among
the followers he left behind, but went instead to
France using the name of Moses Frei. He married
his sister to a certain convent-secretary named Sabah
\sic] and was along with his brother-in-law, guillo-
teened |in the German original: gilgotiniert] during
the regime of Robespierre. This should suffice to show
the high probability of the notorious Francs con¬
nections with the French societies. . . . The overthrow
of the papal throne . . . [and] the conquests of Gen¬
eral Bonaparte give fresh nourishment to the super¬
stitious beliefs of these people. His conquests in the
Orient, particularly of Palestine and Jerusalem, in
addition to his appeal to the Jews, pour oil on their

114

Decline

fire, and it is this precisely that seems to be the tie-
in between them and the French societies.

Count Trautmannsdorf, the governor of Galicia, re¬
ported to Vienna that “these Red Letters frighten the
local Jews with all sorts of superstitious prophecies
and that the governors of the Russian and Prussian
provinces had interc6pted similar mail. The chief of the
Austrian police. Count von Pergen, deemed it neces¬
sary to inform the Emperor that “these appeals create
distrust and dissatisfaction with the highest authorities
and increase the possibility of active resistance and
rebellion.” He received thereupon from “the highest
authorities” an order to take speedy measures against
this dangerous activity. The PRissian government, on
its part, had its plenipotentiary in Frankfurt institute
a thorough investigation:

Whereas in present-day circumstances anything re¬
ferring to secret societies, organizations under un¬
known leaders and religious and political fanatic¬
ism deserves double attention;
whereas according to several sources the agitators
of the Jacobin abominations and outrages continue
to operate in darkest secrecy, taking advantage
of any means that may serve their goals;
whereas they consider the dispersion of the Jews
over so many countries a handy way of dissemi¬
nating their dangerous ideas;
we order you herewith to investigate, in complete
discretion and without causing the slightest sensa¬
tion, anything concerning in the least the exis¬
tence, principles and purposes of the so-called
"Sect Edom” as well as the late Frank, his so-
called daughter and sons; and immediately and
fully report to our ministerial cabinet about the
success of your efforts.

115

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

The anxiety of the authorities was well founded.
Frankists and Jews had fought in the anti-Russian Polish
revolution of 1793/95; the Polish freedom fighters had
put their hope in Napoleon; quite a few Frankists be¬
longed to the Polish Legion that fought under his ban¬
ner; and Napoleon’s promise to establish a Jewish state
in Palestine had caused some excitement among the
Jews. The Holy Alliance suspected the Frankist activities
to be an outgrowth of the French Revolution or a
continuation of the Polish one. The Prussian representa¬
tive in Frankfurt tried to put the fears of his superiors
to rest. He assured them he could not find a trace of
Frankist revolutionary connections; even the proximity
of the theater of war and the presence of the French
in Offenbach were not sufficient grounds for such ap¬
prehensions. His report, like many documents quoted
in this book, is published here for the first time. It con¬
tains some interesting facts about the life of the Frankists
in Offenbach:

Shortly after Frank’s arrival in Offenbach the
number of his subjects rose to between 800 and
1,000. They lived together in form of a brother¬
hood, holding common prayer meetings and walking
around in Polish clothes and partly armed, without
however causing anger or complaints. The Frank
family exhibited great wealth and showed off in
gorgeous clothes and with magnificent parades.Their
money arrived not via banks,- but secretly in escorted
wagons. The Baron managed to get abundant credit,
and this caused many people to go bankrupt; among
them the wealthy Catholic merchant and Frankfurt
court-counselor Hestermann with wife and five chil¬
dren, and the rich Jew Kohlmann who, having ad¬
vanced between them some 300,000 florins, were
ruined and now have joined the sect, living at the
court. Said Baron Frank passed away in 1792 leav-

116

Decline

ing behind a debt burden of 800,000 florins. After
his death the daughter stepped into his place, out¬
ranking her brothers. She increased the display and
had herself addressed Princess. However, because
of declining income and obtrusive creditors, the
Offenbach authorities began to look into the finances
of this family. In order to avoid the brewing storm,
the three Franks took to all sorts of excuse and
subterfuge and filially, on January 18, 1800, sub¬
mitted to the government a rather strange document.
They declared therein that His Majesty, the Em¬
peror of Russia, would pay all their debts, for the
reason of Eva Frank being his full sister, witness
the mourning she wore at the death of Empress
Catharina. Furthermore, that her brother Joseph,
like Roch Frank a full son of the deceased Baron,
would go to St. Petersburg and bring back the sol¬
emn recognition of the Princess and all the money
to pay her debts. In the meantime, seemingly from
some unexpected money shipments, the smallest and
most urgent debts were paid off and some donations
made to the Catholic Church and the poor in order
to delude the public. The Isemburg lords had no
idea of the royal lineage of this family, and their
only incentive for the admission of this armed com¬
munity, which formed so to say a state within the
state, was the wish to enrich their residence-town
with well-to-do settlers. The origin of this family
and their followers, their true aims and sources of
maintenance are veiled in deep darkness. Equally
unclear is whether the background is personal profit¬
eering or political aspirations. In any case, no con¬
nection with the Freemasons, Illuminates, Rosi-
crucians or Jacobins could be established. ... As of
late, the Franks appealed to a number of synagogues
in Germany and abroad to band together in a sect
called Edom which accepts Jews and Christians
alike. They have, however, not been able to win
over a single local Jew. It is also well known that,
since their arrival, none of them got married, al-

117

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

though the newly-born are baptized by the reformed
minister. The young receive no moral or religious
instruction; they remain completely uneducated and
do not learn any craft. Recently idleness became
their ordered way of life. Still, some of them earn
money by making music in the streets [the beautiful
musicians of Bettina von Arnim?] so much so that
they can pay for the purchase of their instru¬
ments.

Had the Prussian representative gone back a few years
in the scope of his investigation, he might have discovered
some “connections.” On December 27, 1791, two weeks
after Frank’s death, Johann G. Forster, the leader of
the German Jacobins, in a letter from Mainz, gave his
father-in-law some information about Frank and his
people. In spite of his repeated efforts, he wrote, he
was unable to find out anything definite, but knew of
the great amounts of money Frank received and of his
uhlan-corps in Polish uniforms. “He is said to have
experimented as an alchemist and daily drank great
portions of Hoffmann’s liquor, which his people be¬
lieved was to keep him immortal. But now that he is
dead, his immortality is explained as a Tibetan soul-
migration; after forty-nine days his spirit will descend
on his second cousin who will become the head of
the sect in his stead.” Considering the fact that the
writer of these lines, several months later, proclaimed the
republic in Mainz, the several hundred men of Frank’s
well-trained cavalry corps would have been a welcome
assistance in the defense of the young republic against
Prussian aggression.

The report of the Prussian representative apparently
quieted his superiors, and the Prague Frankists succeeded
in convincing the authorities of their loyalty by an in-

118

Decline

telligent reply from Loew Hoenig von Hoenigsberg,
Jonas Wehle’s son-in-law, to the anonymous denuncia¬
tion. He addressed a “Letter from an enlightened Prague
Jew” to the city governor, followed by an extensive
memorandum, in the wake of which the heads of the
Prague Jewish community and the rabbis Flekeles and
Landau were taken into custody for several days.

After the failure of the Red Letters to bring in money,
Eva took to other methods. Simultaneously with the
“strange document” mentioned in the Prussian report,
she had the following notice posted in the streets of
Offenbach:

Upon the most high order of his Russian Majesty,
our beloved brother will go this coming July 1st
to St. Petersburg and return six months later under
military protection with an amount of money suf¬
ficient to satisfy all our creditors. Those, however,
who have stained our name, will be publicly pun¬
ished after having received payment.

Hence, a one-year grace. But when the beloved
brother returned empty-handed, there was nothing left
for Eva but to dismiss everyone, including the remnants
of the “army” and to exchange the castle for a smaller
house, keeping only a few servants. Frank’s son Joseph
died in 1803, his brother Roch in 1813. Roch’s be¬
longings, consisting of “some clothing, linen, a writing-
table, a chest of drawers and some small items,” were
seized by the authorities.

Eva held on for some time thanks to the windfall
gift from Alexander I in 1813 and some small ship¬
ments, such as a sum of 600 florins from Warsaw in
1816. She tried to put off her creditors by reminding
them of how her father had paid off his debts, and by

119

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

getting indignant when pressed for payment: “I can¬
not make money out of myself and have somehow to
make ends meet until my capital arrives.” Finally she
offered to settle the debt of one million florins by a
payment of one hundred florins and monthly installments
of three florins each. The bankrupcy was evident. On
request of the creditors, she was put under house arrest
and remained so until her death in 1816.

The sect continued to exist for some time. In 1823
the Frankist Kaplinski tried to call a Frankist congress
at Karlsbad, but few people showed up. The Polish
Frankists maintained their identity into the second half
of the nineteenth century. Baptism had opened the doors
of society to them and, like their brothers in the West,
they rose to high positions in the military, industry,
banking, law, medicine, and science. Many renowned
Polish families are of Frankist descent. They were, on
the whole, liberal patriots, who held leading positions
among the Warsaw Freemasons and who distinguished
themselves in the Polish uprisings of 1830 and 1863.
Only after the failure of the latter did they loose their
group character. This did not protect them from the ac¬
cusation of being pseudo-Christians, at a time when most
of them already belonged to the conservative and even
anti-Semitic classes of Polish society.

120

Moses Dobrushka,
the Jacobin

At Jacob Frank’s funeral we met again Franz Thomas
von Schoenfeld. His attendance gave rise to rumors that
he was taking over the leadership of the sect. Whether
it had been offered to him and he declined, or whether
he had claimed it and was refused, or whether he simply
had come to pay homage to his deceased kin—we don’t
know. Instead of starting a messianic career Schoenfeld
went to France. And from here on, his story, including
the tragic end, reads like a thriller, a web of fact and
fiction, often impossible to disentangle.

Schoenfeld made a theatrical entrance onto the stage
of the French Revolution. The first act was played in
Strasbourg; he arrived there in the midst of a political
affair which kept the town in an uproar. Charles La-
veaux, the editor of the Jacobin Counter de Strasbourg,
had been jailed by the royalist mayor, and Schoenfeld
came to his defense in an open letter to the Courrier in
which he pledged 400 francs “as a sacrifice on the altar
of freedom’’ in case of Laveaux’ vindication. He said:

As to myself, it would be needless to tell you my
name; may it suflSce to say that I belong to that
numerous army which, on the other side of the
Rhine, stands ready to fight for your constitution,
your principles, your fre^om. The prevailing cir¬
cumstances did not allow us to take the Jacobin

121

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

oath in your midst. It is, however, engraved in our
hearts. Far away from you, in the majestic calm
of the night, we stood up, eyes toward heaven, and
vowed: LIBERTY OR DEATH. The heavens heard
us, the tyrants trembled, mankind applauded.

More donations followed, all given in a most con¬
spicuous way, such as a hundred francs to the family
of the first French soldier “who will be lucky enough
to give his blood for freedom’s sake” in the war against
Austro-Prussian aggression. Laveaux was freed, and on
that occasion Schoenfeld had 20 memorial medals cast,
17 of silver, 3 of gold, at a value of 800 francs, as he
did not forget to mention. The Jacobins admitted him
into their ranks and at the reception ceremony he in¬
troduced himself as Sigismund Gottlob Junius Brutus
Frey, presumably to hide his past. And here the first
clouds gathered over the head of the new Jacobin.
The teacher Chairoux, in the liberal-royalist Feuille de
Strasbourg, raised the question of the identity of this
foreigner, his country, fortune, occupation, and mission.
Schoenfeld-Frey answered him in another open letter:

My coimtry is the world, my occupation to do
good, my mission that of all sensitive souls, and my
fortune big enough to pay twenty sous (one franc)
for every word of the stupidities Monsieur Chairoux
has uttered about me witiiout repeating himself. . .

I have counted them, they, are 131 in all; 1 deposit,
however, not 131, but 200 francs on account of any
further idiocy of Monsieur Chairoux, always at
twenty sous die word, to be paid to the soldiers for
a drink to the health of the Jacobins and the shame
of Monsieur Chairoux. . . I live with Monsieur Caire,
Under the Grand Arcades 30, and invite Monsieur
Chairoux to come see me in order to show him, on
the basis of many letters of recommendation, that I

122

Moses Dobrushka, the Jacobin

am not unworthy of his hatred and that of all the
aristocrats of the world.

He took an active part in Jacobin propaganda and
organized several branches of the Friends of the Con¬
stitution, as the Jacobins called themselves. Thus he
explained to 200 wine growers what the natural condi¬
tion of man used to bt, what civilization and despotism
have done, and what freedom will make of him. This
sounds like Rousseau, but also like Gottlieb Wehle’s
last will, and shows how close Frankist thinking had
corne to western European thought. All the while, Frey
took care to remain in the public eye by mentioning his
financial contributions to the cause of France and free¬
dom. At the appointment ceremony of Prince Charles
of Hesse to the rank of general of the French army, “le
brave patriot Frey” presented him with a sword “worth
twenty louis d’or,” as the Courrier prominently reported.

If he had any secret instructions from Vienna, they
were forgotten. As Balaam once came to curse and
blessed instead, Schoenfeld-Frey became infatuated with
the revolution and conveyed his feelings in a letter to
Voss on April 8, 1792, “the 4th year of freedom”:

Dearest, best brother Voss! It is now three weeks
since I have been in Strasbourg, or better: in
heaven; for to live in freedom is, I believe, a heav¬
enly life here in the country of freedom, heaven on
earth. I refrain from telling you of all the blessings
the Frankish freedom gives us; our correspondence
might inconvenience you with the despot. 1 give you
all 1 can, the rest you have to dream about, to quote
Abelard.

In another letter he tried to make Voss move to
Strasbourg, telling hihi of a suitable house with garden

123

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

he had found for him. He appointed himself umpire
in a quarrel between two prominent Jacobins, the Alsa¬
tian H. Salzmann and the former Franciscan monk
Eulogius Schneider who, after having been fired from
his professorship in Bonn because of revolutionary ten¬
dencies, had gone to France and become public prose¬
cutor and “the terror of Alsace”; on April 1, 1794,
several days before the brothers Frey, Schneider was be¬
headed “for misuse of power and unbelievable cruelty
against peaceful citizens.” In an open letter, four pages
long, Frey appealed to the two opponents to shake hands
and give each other the brotherly kiss of peace; he con¬
tinued:

The fatherland demands complete renunciation of
all private wishes; all its children have to annihilate
themselves as individuals and dissolve into one great
new whole. Forget anything of no concern to the
whole, forget yourselves for the sake of all, forget
man for mankind’s sake. The war against Austria
has begun. Her young monarch, having hardly
ascended the throne, is about to begin his royal
career in a stream of blood, to dip the hem of his
purple coat in the heart-blood of his subjects in
order to show them that he can roar like the lion
and kill better than any animal. His altar is still
steaming from the blood of the hundreds of thou¬
sands Joseph II sacrificed to his ambition when he
made war on the princely Osman people who had
lived with him in a holy peace alliance. . . He knew
but the law of his whimsy; the voice of humanity
did not reach his despotic ear, open only to his
desires, his blustering passions.

Is this the same man who had praised Joseph II, his
patron and benefactor, to high heaven as the “person¬
ification of love and goodness combined with manly

124

Moses Dobrushka, the Jacobin

strength”? The same who had enriched himself in the
war against Turkey? Franz II becomes for him God’s
scourge:

Blood-covered youth, begin your gruesome call¬
ing, muster the hordes of your slaves; maybe you
have been chosen to accomplish the holy job of
mankind’s salvatioij, for the despots themselves have
to fulfill the achievement of universal freedom.

Of himself he says in this “outpouring of the heart”:

I am a stranger in your lands, my maternal sky is
far from here, but my heart beats fast at freedom’s
call, the most beautiful of the 18th century. I fol-
/ lowed the beloved of mankind, an infant at her
bosom, and now wallow in her full breasts, greedily
drinking her milk, eating of her honey and refreshing
my soul in an abundance of delight.

Here the enigma begins, because this is too beauti¬
ful to be true. Schoenfeld’s membership with the Illu¬
minates, together with Laveaux, Schneider, and Voss,
and his correspondence with the latter show him already
sympathizing with the revolution before coming to
France. Therefore, the first act probably was preceded
by a prologue. As a matter of fact, Georges Avenel
begins the second volume of his biography of Anacharsis
Cloots, the leader of the ultra-leftists and earliest advo¬
cate of a “permanent revolution,” with the following
passage:

At the same time that Frederick Wilhelm of God’s
grace threatened to engulf the city of the revolution
in blood, posters appeared behind his back in the
streets of Berlin, carrying the date of the first year
of hope and universal liberation. They called upon

125

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

the Prussians:^ “Awake! This is the war of nations
against kings!” The best Berliners secretly named
as the author of these calls to insurrection the young
and wealthy Austrian Baron Eschine Portock who,
having been banished from Vienna, had just re¬
turned from France and—what audacity!—was about
to publish his impressions of this journey. In the
very midst of Prussian monarchy he dared to decor¬
ate the frontispiece of his book with a beautiful
laurel-covered bonnet and bravely sign the preface
with his Jacobin name: Junius Frey—in other words,
Brutus, a free man.

It will be remembered that Junius Frey was unex-
plainably named Eschine Portock in the executioner’s list
in Paris, although the personal data leave no doubt about
his identity. Jules Claretie, the biographer of Camille
Desmoulins, believes that it should not be too difficult
to identify this patriotic foreigner and learn something
more about his sister Leopoldine, allegedly one of the
74 “natural” children of Emperor Leopold II. Actually,
Frey testified at his trial that he was chased out of
Berlin as a Jacobin agitator, after having been hanged
in effigy in Vienna and deprived of his fortune.

As evidence of Frey’s revolutionary activity in Prussia,
Avenel quotes a letter Frey wrote in Strasbourg on
January 21, 1792, made public in the Intimate Letters
about France, published the same year in Berlin (see the
bibliographical note at end of the book). We quote from
page 97: “The National Guards are mostly patriotic
and democratic, which unfortunately means the same
here. They really do not seem to fear the exterior enemy
and do want war; they are only afraid of the aristocrats
they will leave behind and speak of driving them all
ahead of themselves.”

Frey’s presence in Strasbourg in January contradicts

126

Moses Dobrushka, the Jacobin

his letter to Voss, according to which he only arrived
there about the middle of March. The fact, however,
that Leopold II was still alive in January, may be the
key to the puzzle. The letter of January 21 could then
be considered as a report about the fighting spirit of the
French forces; there are other pieces of this kind among
the Intimate Letters. Frey followed the Emperor’s instruc¬
tions until the latter’s death on March 1, but then felt
released from them. If he were now to prove his revolu¬
tionary zeal, nourished by his hatred for Franz II, he had
better hide his previous stay in France. This was the first
snare in which he got entrangled.

Junius Frey,
Grandseigneur

For the time being, however, he felt safe, and in
the company of his brother Emanuel, his sister Leo¬
poldine, his son Joseph Franz, and Laveaux he went
to Paris. Here the second act took place. His wife and
two daughters having been left behind in Vienna, he
passed his 13-year-old son off as 16 and made him
join the French army, while he himself, with brother
and sister, became a few years younger. (We will soon
see for what purpose.) The 21-year-old Leopoldine
Schoenfeld thus became the 16-year-old Leopoldine Frey,
and in order to make it more credible, his own age
decreased from 40 to 35, that of his brother, from 28
to 26.

They arrived in Paris on June 10, 1792, and the

127

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

same evening were introduced by Laveaux to the Jacobin
club. Junius Frey immediately played the grandseigneur
and acquired an elegant mansion in the rue d’Anjou.
The police inventory lists as furnishings in the hall a
bust of Brutus, an aquarium (with no fish), and a cage
with eight canaries; on the walls, engravings of the
oath in the Jeu de Paume and of the tombs of Marat
and Lepeletier; on the clothes tree a Jacobin bonnet
decorated with four golden acorns. A broad staircase
led to the upper floor. In the drawing room, a mantel¬
piece with a marble clock and a cupid of Sevres por¬
celain, flanked by two chandeliers; a large mirror from
floor to ceiling; a mahogany dressing table; a piano; a
couch; eight chairs upholstered with green-and-white
striped silk. In the bedroom, upholstered with golden
damask, a fourposter bed with yellow and white pat¬
terned curtains; a huge cupboard with a relief portrait
of Cicero on a blue marble plaque; two easy chairs, etc.
In another bedroom was a fourposter bed and crimson-
red curtains, lined with white taffeta. Two more rooms,
one lined with green taffeta, the other with blue silk,
and so on. “Here one may find our Junius, pen in hand,
dreaming of the rights of man or immersed in the works
of Plutarch or Rousseau. His severe exterior and revolu¬
tionary attire . . . the philosophical haircut and the red
cap on his savant head are to vouch for the purity of
his revolutionary sentiments.” Thus Robespierre de¬
scribed him sarcastically.

The house of the brothers Frey became a Jacobin
center. They fought in the storming of the Tuileries on
August 10, 1792, in which Junius was slightly wounded;
the solemn proclamation of the Republic took place “in
the light of torches donated by the citizen Frey.” Armed
with a letter of recommendation from the Strasbourg

128

Junius Frey, Grandseigneur

Jacobins, the brothers applied for French citizenship.
On August 26, 1792, the National Convention bestowed
honorary citizenship on a number of foreigners, among
them Schiller and Klopstock, and the deputy Boussac
moved to extend it also to Wieland, Voss, and the
brothers Frey:

The famous Wieland of Weimar, Saxonia, the
learned author of many German writings, has served
mankind well, probably to the same extent for Ger¬
many as Voltaire for France. In his periodical Mer¬
cury he takes an energetic stand for the success of
the Revolution, trying to spread this idea among his
countrymen. The famous Voss of Eutin, Holstein,
has likewise deserved well of both mankind and
/ France. This important writer combines a thorough
knowledge of the older literature with the purest
philosophy; a friend of mankind, as well as of free¬
dom and equality, he does not miss an occasion to
praise the French Revolution in his classic-poetic
hymns, published in Strasbourg. No less deserving
for the cause of mankind are the brothers Frey,
Junius and Emanuel, renowned German writers. Out
of pure love for the French Revolution and selfless
patriotism, they left house and home seven months
ago to settle in France in these stormy times in order
to share the sufferings of the true patriots and, upon
the success of the Revolution, to rejoice with them
at the destruction of kings and kingdoms. They have
voluntarily renounced their aristocratic titles in order
to live in France as good citizens and sansculottes
and have not ceased recommending to their country¬
men the advantages of our unforgettable Revolution.
The two brothers, enjoying the reputation of eager
patriots, have been gladly accepted as members by
the Strasbourg Jacobin society. The older Frey estab¬
lished several patriotic clubs in the environs of Stras¬
bourg and instructed the population about the ad¬
vantages of the new constitution. The two gentlemen

129

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

refrain from publicizing their truly patriotic deeds,
but could easily point to many proofs of their noble
minds. They could submit their patriotic writings to
rigorous scrutiny; they could call the attention of
the friends of France to the many benefits they
rendered to the Confederates; they could recall the
great dangers they exposed themselves to on August
10 .

The bill was drafted by Junius Frey; the draft is
preserved among his papers in Paris and contains cor¬
rections by his hand. Compared with what he had to
say about Wieland and Voss, his self-assessment is
certainly not an exercise in understatement and modesty.

Originally the bill was to be introduced by the Alsatian
Ruehl, and not the Provencal Boussac. Ruehl knew the
Freys personally, but his name does not even appear
a^ong the supporters of the bill. Was there already
something brewing against them? Whatever the reason,
the bill did not come to a vote, and the brothers made
another attempt. The day of the proclamation of the
Republic, September 21, 1792, they adopted a war
orphan and agreed to support a blind old woman whose
husband had been killed in the storming of the Tuileries,
and to pay her and several war veterans a pension of
200 francs each. Any of these acts of charity would
have entitled them to citizenship, but only after a year s
residence, and for this it was too soon.

In order to finance the War, the government sold the
properties of the aristocratic refugees, and the brothers
Frey acquired three of these “national estates for 210,-
000 francs*, the palaces of the Count de Montfermail and
of Madame de Cavagnac in Paris and the monastery
of Chelles (near Meaux) with church and park. They
did not fail to mention these “patriotic deeds” at their

130

Junius Frey, Grandseigiieur

trial. Referring to his experience in supplying the Aus¬
trian army, Junius Frey offered the French war depart¬
ment his services as a broker for the shipment of arms
and wheat via Venice and submitted a plan for draw¬
ing Turkey into the war against Austria. He bought up
the cargoes of captured enemy vessels and, on the side,
loaned money at high rates. A number of German
emigrants lived in his house. The expensive household
with frequent receptions and banquets ran up a monthly
bill of 4,000 to 5,000 francs. Where did all that money
come, from?

Junius answered this question at the trial: “My wife
is the adopted daughter of a wealthy man. She has two
million at her disposal and sends me money on demand.”
This is not entirely correct, for we know that the
“wealthy man” had disinherited his adopted daughter.
It also contradicts Frey’s assertion that his fortune had
been confiscated and his family harassed by the Austrians.
Frey’s agent, Johann Friedrich Diedrichsen, testified that
Frey’s wife continued to live in grand style in Vienna
and that her fortune had not been touched. Actually,
Wilhelmine Schoenfeld lived unmolested in Vienna until
her death in 1801; her two daughters married into the
Austrian aristocracy. If she did send money to her hus¬
band, she could only have done so in a roundabout
way. As a matter of fact, he received several remittances
through a bank in Hamburg.

The above mentioned Diedrichsen (or Dietrichstein,
as he is named in some German documents) was in
charge of the Frey finances. He accompanied the broth¬
ers on their journey to Germany and joined them in
Paris after a side trip to London. He became acquainted
with them in Vienna and possibly earlier in Bruenn.
(Among the Bruenn nobility there was a family Dietrich-

131

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

stein in whose house Joseph II was a frequent guest.)
After having worked for seven years in a Viennese bank,
he entered the service of the Frey family, living with
and completely dependent on them. He had a sexual
relationship with the younger brother, and Emanuel
Frey played with the 50-year-old man like a capricious
diva, shutting him out at night, withholding his salary,
and engaging in similar torments. Diedrichsen once
turned to the older brother for money because he “had
nothing left to bite,” asking him not to tell anybody,
“least of all your brother.” In a long letter, dated Berlin,
February 17, 1792, he implored the latter to give him
his freedom, and humiliated himself by begging for
money “because it is so easy for you to get some; you
only have to reach out with your slender arm for that
universal metal of metals, and you enjoy being a spend¬
thrift anyhow.”

The unfortunate man was taken out of the Swiss
diligence and shared the fate of his masters for the sole
reason that he was their employee.

Junius Frey,
Philosopher
of the Revolution

Throughout all these hectic dealings, Junius Frey found
the time to write a 250-page social philosophy, Philo-
sophie sociale, which he published in the summer of 1793
and dedicated to the French people. In the preface he

132

The Philosopher of the Revolution

says he had worked on it for a year with no intention of
publishing it—nothing being more hateful to him; but
yielding to the pressure of some friends who read it, he
changed his mind. The book carries as a motto Alexander
Pope’s much-quoted words “The proper study of man¬
kind is man.” It is a philosophic-political treatise on the
defense of democracy through the seizure of power by
a minority—in other words, a justification of minority
rule. The starting point is Rousseau’s statement that
“every people has the right to change its laws, even the
best ones, and if it hurts itself thereby—who is to stop
it?” This makes Rousseau, the benefactor of mankind,
its. wdrst enemy. For the logical consequence of this idea,
says Frey, is anarchy and permanent revolution (un
systdme desorganisateur et perpetuellement revolution-
naire); and this would lead to the tyrannic rule of a mad
majority, against which the common sense minority could
only defend itself by seizing power.

The question arises now of how to defend democ¬
racy. Frey looks for the answer to the history of reli¬
gion, every social order being some sort of religion, with
its own theology. He directs his main criticism at Moses,
whose laws live on in Christianity and Mohammedanism.
Moses knew the truth, but instead of revealing it to
his people, he burdened them with laws that still oppress
mankind. (This recalls a saying of Frank in Offenbach
on November 25, 1790: “The children of Israel were
given only the Mosaic laws, which are a burden and
mortify the people.”) His knowledge of physics and
chemistry should have enabled Moses to unmask and
repeat the tricks of the Egyptian sorcerers. He should
have told the children of Israel at Mount Sinai: “Ap¬
proach! For the fire you see and the divine thunder you
hear are nothing but the work of my own and my

133

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

helpers’ hands. I am going to show you the natural
causes of these phenomena. Let us work for the per¬
fection of these tools of human happiness and not allow
them to be abused by a small caste for their own selfish
interests, lest some day man will get tired of culture
and long for a return to his natural status.” Had he told
them the truth, what a people would he have made of
them in the forty years he had for it! A masterpiece of
art and culture, and not this mess of fact and fiction,
of light and darkness, of superstition and stubborn
clinging to false concepts, which still poison the culture
of even the most enlightened nations. Christ and Mo¬
hammed are not to blame, for they built on the foun¬
dations laid by Moses. Christ assumed the separation
of State and Church to be the prerequisite of freedom
and equality; but his teachings degenerated in the hands
of his successors, who made a farce of the gospel. Like
Socrates, the first martyr to common sense, he was
sentenced to death. Since then darkness has prevailed
on earth, despite the revolutions of Luther, Zwingli,
Melanchthon, Calvin, Spinoza, Hobbes, Leibniz, and
Locke. The immortal Kant had to come and overthrow
all existing systems. His metaphysical language is un¬
intelligible to the ordinary reader, but protects him from
the hemlock cup and the cross. No man ever wrote with
such courage, never before has falsehood been better
exposed, never before truth put into its rights with such
determination. (This sounds like an allusion to Kant’s
sympathies for the French Revolution which he main¬
tained even at the height of the Terror. Incidentally,
Kant took up an idea of Rousseau’s when he said that
no government had the right to make their people happy
against their will, without Frey branding him “an enemy
of mankind.”) Socrates, Christ and Kant are Frey’s stars

134

The Philosopher of the Revolution

in the sky of human bliss; “Turn to them, you sages of
the world, make it your foremost task to overthrow and
disorganize this system of falsehood, lead us back to
nature and let us draw from the well of a new culture!”

Four-fifths of the book are devoted to showing the
way to preserve freedom. Nothing easier than that! The
people have only to watch their elected representatives
not to stray from the principles of the constitution. Any¬
one voting three times against them automatically ex¬
cludes himself from the people’s representative bodies.
Supreme law is the preservation of the individual in
freedom and equality. Nobody may be deprived of this
prerogative because this would nullify the social contract.
Th& individual, in this case, would no longer owe any¬
thing to society and be entitled to rebellion and revenge.
On the other hand, any violation of the constitution is
punishable by death, even if it is done in the name of
freedom of the press, freedom of speech, or political and
religious tolerance.

It is needless to point out the weaknesses and con¬
tradictions of these “freedom guarantees” which open
every door to arbitrariness and tyranny. In the Jacobin
club all were jubilant. All but Robespierre. Did he feel
threatened in his role as philosopher of the Revolution
or did he have other misgivings? Chabot, the most
powerful man after Robespierre, acclaimed the author as
“the greatest thinker of Europe,” equal to Socrates and
Jesus, and commissioned him to write a pamphlet against
the moderate Girondists. Frey delivered the 70-page
booklet “within 24 hours”. He called it Les Aventures
politiques du Pere Nicaise ou Vanti-federaliste (The
Political Adventures oj Father Blockhead or the Anti-
Federalist), and it pleased the ruling Montagnards so
much that they had 20,000 copies printed. It is a violent

135

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

attack on the Girondists, these “anarchists and destruc¬
tive elements” (desorganisateurs, a pet word of Frey
which he scatters left and right, in praise and reproach).
The pamphlet contributed to the condemnation and ex¬
ecution of the Girondist leaders.

The rabbinical candidate Moses Dobrushka had come
a long way from Frankism, indeed. And the end was
near.

The Last Act

At this point Leopoldine Frey entered upon the scene,
marking the beginning of the third and last act. What had
made her come to Paris? Love of the Revolution?
Admiration of the great brother? He offered her in mar¬
riage to the former Capucin monk and “first revolution¬
ary of Europe,” Francois Chabot, with a yearly allow¬
ance of 4,000 francs, free room and board for five
years, and a dowry of 200,000 francs payable within;
that time. As a member of the executive branch of the
revolutionary regime, the all powerful Security Com¬
mittee, Chabot was in control of the political police.
He was an arch demagogue who appeared at the Na¬
tional Convention in frayed trousers, wooden clogs,
and an open shirt which bared his hairy chest. Other¬
wise, however, he dressed like a dandy; the police found
in his home twelve silk tailcoats and forty pairs of
trousers of the finest English cloth—some wardrobe for
a sansculotte! From father confessor to member of the

136

The Last Act

National Convention, he was noted for his debauchery.

This individual was Frey’s choice for a scheme of
which we will soon learn more, and the bait was Leo¬
poldine. In order to whet Chabot’s appetite, he passed
her off as a virgin of sixteen for whose hand several mil¬
lionaires had asked. Chabot married her, but later tried to
extricate himself from the affair by claiming that the
brothers had forced he'r upon him at dagger point (Us me
tenaient I’epee dans les reins); besides, Chabot claimed,
the marriage contract was void because the bride was a
minor. Frey did not hesitate to disown his wife by
promising Chabot that the marriage to Leopoldine would
make him the head of the Frey family “because I would
remain a bachelor and my brother is only half a man
incapable of having children” (mon frere n’est qu’un
demi-homme incapable de faire des enfants). The new¬
lyweds moved into the house in the rue d’Anjou after
Chabot had paid off his housekeeper, Julie Berger, who
was expecting his child; he paid her 1,200 francs—out
of Frey’s pocket. Whether Leopoldine became an ac¬
complice to Frey’s scheming of her own free will or
out of obedience for her brother (Chabot said she
trembled before him) was her secret; and what he had
in mind, his. In a petition to the authorities, he claimed
that all he wanted was “to continue my peaceful exist¬
ence as a patriotic writer, helping to forge the weapons
for the defense of the Republic.” But was this really
“all”?

Frey frequented the Cafe Corazza, the meeting place •
of German ©migrants, and there met some people who
knew more about him than he liked. There was the
baron Frederick Trenck, the lover of the sister of Fred¬
erick the Great; having escaped the Prussian prison, he
had come to Paris to try his luck. He knew Frey from

137

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Vienna and asked him for some money and a recom¬
mendation for admission to the Jacobin club. Frey re¬
fused and managed to have him rejected by the Jacobins.
Trenck complained about it to one Marguerie, who
considered it his patriotic duty to report to the police
what he had learned on that occasion; namely, that Frey
used to be the protege of Joseph II, had gained
the favors of Leopold II by prostituting his two sisters
and, rotten as he was, did not even blush about it. Very
much upset, Marguerie hurried early in the morning to
Chabot (he found him in bed with a friend). Chabot
calmed him down: He knew Frey well, and if the latter
were an Austrian spy, one could not imagine a worse
one, for he had developed a plan to frustrate any plots
of the Austrian court. Moreover, he had been banished
from Vienna for pressing Leopold II to repay some
millions he owed him. On the other hand, the story about
his sisters may be true, Frey being unscrupulous in re¬
gard to women; in Vienna, however, such matters were
considered irrevelant. Having reassured Marguerie,
Chabot apparently got in touch with Frey because the
next morning Trenck was arrested and later executed
as a Prussian spy. While in jail, he made the following
“Deposition about the cause of my imprisonment”:

I used to know a certain Jew by the name of
Dobrushka who came from Moravia to Vienna as a
pimp for his two sisters, who infected and ruined
the young cavaliers and were publicly chased out
of town and country. Emperor Joseph used this Jew
as a spy after he had acquired the honorable name
of Schoenfeld. Like everybody, I knew him under
this name. . . and learned of his having free access
also to Emperor Leopold. Four months ago my wife
wrote me from Vienna to be on my guard, this
cunning Jew being in Paris, doubtless entertaining

138

The Last Act

some evil designs on behalf of the Emperor. ... I
tried to find him, but could not until some Vien¬
nese told me of his living in the rue d’Anjou, spend¬
ing lots of money and playing an important role with
the Jaeobins. He had changed his name to Frey and
married his sister, the famous virgin of Vienna |?], to
the deputy Chabot. I went immediately to see him,
and there he was, the same Jew Dobmshka, the
EmperoFs spy, who told me on that oeeasion that
it was he who had prevented my admission to the
Jaeobins.

A friend of Georg Forster, the Mainz physician Georg
Wedekind, who lived with the Freys, hastened to declare
Trenck insane, but Frey found it nevertheless appropriate
to insert the following notice in the Paris press:

The family of Leopoldine Frey-Minaires |?| has
its origins in Bohemia and is of the Jewish faith and
not, as has been alleged, of that of the Moravian
Brethren. The old Frey made considerable transac¬
tions for the Queen of Hungary during the Seven
Years’ War, as a result of which the Viennese court
owed him two million. . . As the Empress was
anxious to spread the Catholic faith in her domains,
she moved Leopoldine’s father to abandon the Jew¬
ish faith and adopt the Roman Catliolic one. In
lieu of payment, she granted him the fine manor of
Found-Schomberg near Bruenn, valued at more than
two million. It was there that the charming Leopol¬
dine was born. Her father provided her and her two
brothers with an excellent education. After the out¬
break of the Revolution all three came to Paris to
breath the air of freedom, and here Chabot came
to know the citizen Leopoldine.

This is a complete fabrication. “Old Frey” never was
baptized, he carried the name of Salomon Dobrushka

139

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

all his life, and the court did not owe him millions, if
anything. Junius also spread the tale that Empress Maria
Theresa was the godmother of Leopoldine and had
traveled from Vienna to Bruenn for her baptism. Ac¬
tually, Leopoldine was baptized in 1791 at the age of
twenty, not in Bruenn, but in Vienna, at a time when
Maria Theresa had been dead for eleven years. If
Junius really cared for his beloved sister, the darling of
the family, it would have occurred to him that he could
only hurt her by this kind of falsehood. And if, us
rumors went, she was indeed a daughter of Leopold II,
that would have made her a niece of Marie Antoinette,
and— parbleu! —Chabot would have married into ^the
royal family! What did he intend by spreading such tales?
Pure braggadocio? Chabot, meanwhile, beaming with joy,
announced his betrothal in the Jacobin club, boasting of
his dowry and pointing to the patriotism of his future
in-laws who had helped him to uncover the Girondist
plot. He invited everybody to the wedding, which was
to take place before a notary at eight in the morning so
that he could be on time for the opening of the Con¬
vention at nine. Icy silence followed the invitation. Out¬
side they talked about “Chabot’s Austrian.”

With the outbreak of the hostilities, all foreigners had
been put under police surveillance and later expelled
from Paris. The government, of course, had its informers
among the German emigrants, and one of them, Johann
Baptist Wilhelm, found out the following about the
brothers Frey:

There dwell two Austrians in the rue d’Anjou,
number 19, who pretend to be arch-patriots. They
do not mind spending in order to avoid suspicion,
and they are clever enough to voice only patriotism
in their writings. They call themselves the brothers

140

The Last Act

Frey. . . and are Jews by birth. Tormented by the
ambition to achieve the peerage, they had them¬
selves baptized and Maria Theresa bestowed upon
them the title of Nobles von Schoenfeld. They are
very intelligent politicians and write and speak with
extraordinary patriotism. They frequently entertain
many deputies and Chabot, with his mistress, are
often seen in their company. These fellows are ex¬
tremely shrewd and understand how to worm any¬
thing out of their guests without arousing their
suspicion (Diese Piirsche seynd aber so pfifpg, doss
sie ihren Gdsten die Wiirmer aus der Nase ziehen,

. ohne dass sich diese etwas vermuthen.) ... It is
obvious that these immoral fellows are first-class
spies in the pay of Prussia and/or Austria. They
squandered all they had in Vienna, leaving nothing
^ but debts. They belong to the Jacobin society, and
not enough that they mingle with everybody in order
to ferret out information, they have salaried Jews
and Christians circulating about town and reporting
to them all that happens. . . Wisdom requires that
all measures made necessary by the political condi¬
tion of France be adopted against these enigmatic
people.

9 /yn

(One does not have to be a graphologist to infer the
character of this fine gentleman from the conceited flour¬
ish of his signature.)

More reports about the brothers Frey came pouring
in. The representative of the Nuremberg Jacobins, G.
Haussmann, reported the following data based on in¬
formation gained from Diedrichsen (he calls him Diet-
richstein):

141

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

The Freys are bom Jews by the name of Trop-
ushka from Moravia, ennobled von Schoenfeld. The
older Frey is married; his wife and two daughters
live in Vienna. He enlisted his 16-year-old son into
the revolutionary army, passing him off as his
nephew. As to their fortune, it is only known that
they have great debts in Germany. . . A short ac¬
quaintance makes one realize that these two fellows
are the shrewdest schemers there are.

Now the storm broke in the Jacobin club. Following
a heated debate, a resolution was passed declaring a
counterrevolutionary anyone who, since 1789, had mar¬
ried a foreigner, in particular an Austrian, and who wore
clothes of imported material. This was clearly all meant
for Chabot, and he was immediately expelled from the
club, followed shortly thereafter by his brothers-in-law.
An official inquiry into the “Affair Chabot” was initiated
which yielded disastrous information:

The brothers Frey have adopted this name m
order to escape their creditors in Germany, to whom
they owe great amounts of money. . . They are Jews
by birth who were baptized and ennobled as von
Schoenfeld. With the exception of one sister who did
not want to abandon Judaism, the whole family
embraced Christianity. Two of the brothers serve
with the Austrian army in the war against the
French Republic. The older Frey left his wife and
children in Vienna where one of his sisters takes care
of them; she, in turn, is being kept by a wealthy
baron. Said Frey was used by Joseph II for the
purpose of espionage, the children of Israel, as is
well known, being superior to all other nations in
this occupation. . . These gentlemen arrived 20
months ago in France, eoming from Berlin. They
started in Strasbourg and, with the help of some
intriguers and money, smuggled tliemselves into the

142

Junius Frey, the Speculator

Jacobins, who knew nothing of their moral and
political past. . . In one word, these Freys are im¬
moral egoists, full of tricks and schemes, who, dis¬
guised as patriots, serve the enemies of the Re¬
public and are paid by them. In the light of these
faets, which are beyond any doubt, there is good
cause to assume that the two scoundrels sought the
connection with Chabot in order to avoid the atten¬
tion of the poliee and the better to achieve their
goal.

' Junius Frey,

the Speculator

What was their goal? Neither this nor the preceding
accusations tell us anything about it beyond allegations
and malicious gossip. Chabot spilled it all. He was caught
off guard and started retracting and contradicting him¬
self, which caused the prosecutor to have the house in
the rue d’Anjou searched. When the agents arrived there,
they were greeted by Chabot and the brothers Frey; all
papers were neatly placed in evidence. The agents found
them to be of the purest patriotism, with true love for
liberty and equality. This is, at least, what the protocol
says, which evidently was composed by Junius Frey and
bears his and his brother’s signatures. No incriminating
materials were found. Apparently it did not occur to
the searchers that these could have been removed or de¬
stroyed.

Chabot knew well he would not get off the hook that
easily. He hurried to Robespierre, the only one who could

143

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

save him now, and let him in on a conspiracy he had
uncovered by lending a hand to it: With the help of
bribed deputies and a forged resolution of the National
Convention, the shares of the Compagnie des Indes, the
French East-India Company, were to be made practically
worthless and bought up by the conspirators—hence, a
large-scale corruption affair as it has occurred many
times without heads rolling. Robespierre remained silent.
Chabot thereupon handed to the Security Committee the
sum of 100,000 francs he claimed he had received for
bribing the deputies. He did not say where the money
came from, only where it was to go, naming the deputies
who were to get it, and was arrested with them. Now,
at last, Robespierre raised his voice against the foreign
agents “who, in the guise of a glowing patriotism, have
managed to infiltrate the revolutionary committees.” He
did not mention names, but everybody could say for
himself whom he meant by the following description:

Ever since the first days of the Revolution two
scoundrels have been living in Paris whose art of
dissimulation makes them perfect tools in the hands
of the tyrants, the two biggest rogues Austria has
ever thrown up among us (les deux plus habiles
scelerats que VAutriche ait vomis parmi nous). One
of them has added to his assumed surname the name
of the founder of freedom in Rome.

However, until November 23, 1793, the brothers Frey
and their sister remained free. It was never established
whether the bribe money came from them. Yet it may
be assumed that Junius Frey was involved in the affair
of the Compagnie des Indes, even to the extent of
having contrived it. The war made money transfers
from Vienna practically impossible and Junius was in

144

Junius Frey, the Speculator

desperate need of cash. Some witnesses who had been
frequent guests at his home testified that at first he
displayed great wealth (on y remarquait un air de depense
tres imposant), but recently was cutting a poor figure
(faisait figure assez mince). In the course of 1793, mat¬
ters must have deteriorated badly, because Junius had
Diedrichsen pawn four watches, a golden box, a ring,
and a set of table silver. Expecting some money from
Vienna, he presented two drafts of 1,000 florins each
for discount in Hamburg, committing thereby a felony
as one of the notes was drawn on a nonexisting bank
(all.in the name of poor Diedrichsen).

Meanwhile, from his cell Chabot flooded the govern¬
ment with petitions, a last will, and a 60-page plea in
his defense; he sent long letters to Robespierre, with
the single result that Leopoldine (ma chere Poldine) was
released from jail. However, she had to leave Paris and
moved to nearby Boulogne. Chabot also came to the
aid of her brothers, although in a rather peculiar way,
writing to the Committee of Public Welfare:

I thank providence that you have at last made up
your minds to jail my two brothers-in-law. I consider
them as spotless as the sun; they are honest Jacobins
who, better than any security committees, have
helped me to unmask the agents of Austria and
Prussia. Otherwise one would have to regard them
as the biggest hypocrites there are.

A letter to Robespierre, however, sounds quite differ¬
ent:

My in-laws are spies? How am I to know? Am
I a clairvoyant? I was not given the time to find out
for myself whether they really were traitors. If they
are innocent, set them free; if not, behead them and
I would willingly lend a hand. But do not blame me
for their crimes!

145

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

As for the brothers themselves, they could only
profess their good faith, the act of accusation being
presented to them only during the trial. In one of their
petitions they claim:

We are Jacobins, truly dedicated to the principles
of the indivisible Republic. When Sophocles was
accused by his own children, he read to the Athe¬
nians some parts of his works and was declared in¬
nocent. Like that Athenian sage, I refer to my
Philosophie sociale in which there is not a single
line that would not conjure the rage of the tyrants
upon my head. There is no refuge outside of France
for the author of such a work.

This and another petition remaining unanswered, the
brothers asked at least to be listened to, as they knew
of many things of interest to the Convention. Junius
pleaded by mentioning his rheumatism and his “only”
sister, left behind sick and bedridden. When this plea
was not acted upon either, the brothers apparently re¬
signed themselves to their fate, while Chabot tried with¬
out success to commit suicide.

On April 3, 1794, they all appeared before the revo¬
lutionary tribunal together with Danton, who furiously
objected to it. (Stalin adopted a similar practice dur¬
ing the Moscow trials of the 1930s, seating ordinary
criminals and speculators among the political defen¬
dants.) The prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville had to sep¬
arate the defendants into two groups, the Dantonists who
were accused of the attempted overthrow of the Republic,
and the group involved in the affair of the Compagnie
des Indes, including the brothers Frey. The act of ac¬
cusation calls them “ex-barons and agents of both En-
gland[?] and the Austrian cabinet, disguised as revolu¬
tionary patriots. In order to make people believe in their
love of freedom, they pretended to have been hanged

146

Junius Frey, the Speculator

in effigy in Vienna and their property confiscated.” (One
of the jurors, the young painter Topino-Lebrun, later
himself a victim of the Terror, kept a notebook during
the trial in which he wrote that Emanuel Frey, at that
point, indignantly protested against ever having been
hanged or persecuted: J’ai ne point ete ni pendu ni
persecute). “Nevertheless,” the act of accusation goes on,
“they found the means to give their sister a dowry of
200,000 francs in order to induce Chabot to marry a
foreign woman of the class proscribed under the reign
of freedom [the aristocracy]. Never before have criminals
spread their nets with greater baseness and impudence,
never before have conspirators bared the true objectives
of their machinations with less shame.” The judgment,
however, dropped the charge of espionage, but found
the defendants guilty of a conspiracy to defame the
National Convention by bribing some of its members
and thus bring about its dissolution.

During the two-day trial the prosecutor mentioned
the brothers only once, while inveighing against Chabot
for having allied himself by marriage “to those Austrian
Jews;” Toward the end of the trial, with not much time
left (the prosecutor had already set the time of the ex¬
ecution), they were briefly interrogated. As may be re¬
called, when asked where their money had come from,
Junius said from his wife. And asked why he had come
to France, Emanuel answered: “To enjoy the freedom
promised by the French. I followed my brother like a
son follows his father. [Topino-Lebrun noted here:'
J’etais plutot I’enfant que le frere.] I do not regret having
come and am ready to die with him.”

This was all. On April 5 they were sentenced to
death and, that same afternoon, together with Danton,
Chabot, and the others, executed on the Place de la
Revolution, today Place de la Concorde.

147

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Alone on the empty stage remained, after six months
of marriage, the young widow Leopoldine Chabot, nee
Frey, with her 14-year-old nephew Joseph. Still claiming
to be sixteen, she implored the Convention to have
pity on her youthful age and let “the lamentable rem¬
nants of an unfortunate family return to Paris.” Helpless
and destitute, she stands alone in the world, with no
experience whatsoever. The little her brother left her
went to his and Chabot’s creditors. “What a dowry!
Good heavens!” (Quel dot! Juste del!)

She received permission to go to Paris, but only for
some clothing and utensils. Her last sign of life is a
petition to the chairman of the Convention in which she
asked for an answer to her previous petitions, conclud¬
ing: “The light of justice shines for all! Relying solely
on this claim, we beg for a prompt decision on our fate
or at the least an assurance that we are damned forever
to carry the guilt of our near ones. We bewail the mis¬
fortune of our birth and resign ourselves to the sentence
of the Last Judgment!”

We do not know what became of her. She probably
perished in the turmoil of the Revolution and is said
to have died in 1795. According to a letter m the pos¬
session of the family Chabot, written in 1874, she re¬
turned to Vienna. According to another source she
married the Prussian envoy to Paris, Count Sandoz-
Rollin, in 1800. But the marriage license issued by the
Prussian government does not give the name of the bride,
who, therefore, may have been her sister Bluemele (that
is Theresa Maria Josepha Eleanora von Schoenfeld),
who died in Paris in 1808. When and why she came to
Paris, and whether she found her sister still alive, we do

not know.

148

Epilogue

Thus the curtain falls on the triple life of Moses
Dobrushka-Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld-Junius Brutus
Frey, a person not deserving history’s attention, in the
words' of J.-F. Robinet, the historian of the Dantonists.
Posterity was of divided opinion. The French historians
Mathiez, Boland and Lenotre considered him an adven¬
turer and spy, Lenotre especially not holding back his
anti-Semitic sentiments: “This German Jew was far from
sticking out his head for an idea; all he wanted
was money, and for that he had the nose of a track-
hound. Hypocritical, servile, of pliant character, he
played his part, whether subservient or arrogant, with
undeniable talent, although somewhat clumsily.” For
Leon Kahn, Frey was an innocent bystander who got
caught by the machinery of the Revolution; and for
Avenel and Claretie he was a true revolutionary patriot
who fell victim to Chabot’s machinations. This opinion
is also shared by Kretschmann in his aforementioned
eulogy on the brothers Frey. Robinet considers them in¬
nocent (Us ne furent convaincus de rien); they had allied
themselves by marriage with Chabot, but this was no
crime. He ranks them among the many speculators and
adventurers who had come to Paris to enrich themselves.
In the Danton trial they were assigned the parts of sup¬
porting actors to make the alleged conspiracy from

149

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

abroad more colorful and credible. Georg Buchner takes
the same view in his play Danton’s Death. Gershom
Scholem considers Frey an unusual personality and true
Frankist; half Jew and half Christian; half Cabbahst
and half reformer; half Jacobin and half spy, who got
entangled in his own ropes and took his secret with him
to the grave. Egon Erwin Kisch, the prolific Prague
reporter, calls him a most colorful and most disastrous
adventurer “who jumped from the Talmud into German
literature, from the ghetto into the Theresianum, from
uncle Popper to brother-in-law Chabot, from Cathol¬
icism to atheism, who took Elke Joss with him into the
world of Austrian aristocracy and his sister and brother
into the world of the French Revolution, and there laid
axe to the foundations of the masonry that fell on him
and buried him.”

Junius Frey was all this and more, and the secret
he thought he took with him was “the misfortune of his
birth.” He wanted to escape from it, and this could
only make for a sorry end, a typical Jewish destiny of
his time. From the stuffiness of the ghetto he wanted to
break out, that ghetto which, in 1822, made an appalling
impression on Heine: “I shudder at the thought of the
first sight of a Polish village near Mesritch, mostly
inhabited by Jews. The weekly paper of W., cooked to
a pulp, could not have a more nauseating effect on me
than the sight of these tattered figures of filth. . . . The
nausea, however, gave way to a feeling of pity as soon
as I took a closer look at the living conditions of
these people and saw the pigsty hovels in which they
dwell, jabber, pray, haggle, and-decay miserably.” That
ghetto from which there was no escape—one could
not even buy one’s way out—except by way of make-

150

Epilogue

believe and feint. Within the ghetto walls the Jew had
something to hold on to, some ground to stand on, tightly
limited though it was. Money-lending and related busi¬
nesses like tax-farming and army-purveying were prac¬
tically the only occupations left to him. They gave
him a position of power in the ghetto which com¬
pensated for the humiliations that awaited him outside,
where he remained the despised pariah, no matter how
rich. He employed a host of agents and buyers; and
the ghetto, from the rabbi to the schnorrer, drew its
livelihood from him. He ruled over it with an iron hand
and made it a point to represent it before those in power.
The ghetto people looked up to their “princes” with pride
a^d awe as though they were real princes, equal to those
on the outside.

There was something to it. Taking advantage of the
close connections the Jewish communities maintained
among themselves over and beyond national boundaries,
the Jewish financiers disposed, long before the time of
railroad and telegraph, of an international communica¬
tions network, such as only the Church could command.
Undoubtedly, the transition from feudal economy to capi¬
talism would have come anyhow, but their prime import¬
ance for the development of the modern credit system
cannot be denied. It was perhaps their position within
the ghetto that made the Rothschilds and other Jewish
financiers (like Frey’s father-in-law, Joachim Popper)
never abandon their faith and indignantly reject baptism
as a preposterous idea. For the non-Jew that is,
the person belonging to no religious denomination there
was no place in this world. Holland was the only exception,
but even there one had to be a Spinoza to dare it. The Spi-

151

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

nozist Lessing giaspcd the nature of the Jewish problem
better than anybody else when he said (in a letter to Men¬
delssohn) that it could be solved only in a world with no
Jews or Christians—a statement similar to that of the young
Hegelian, Karl Marx: “when the Christians will cease to be
Jews,” meaning never.

Under the given conditions, the ghetto runaway led a
sham existence, doomed to failure even before he tried to
succeed in a world which had made cheating mandatory for
his survival and had taught him not to try being himself.
Moses Dobrushka, the ghetto Jew, tried it as a Frankist,
pseudo-Jew, pseudo-Christian, subservient courtier, ama¬
teurish poet, pseudo-Freemason, and revolutionary philo¬
sopher_only to remain “a twig on the withered branch of

the tree of humanity.” In compulsive overcompensation for
his Jewish inferiority feelings, he always had to be one step
ahead of everybody, only to be thrown back to his Jewish¬
ness, even if he did not know of the malicious reports point¬
ing to him as a Jew. And thus he remained, whether Catho¬
lic. Ficemason, or Jacobin, the eternal renegade, driven to
be holier than thou, better than the best.

The French Revolution, with one stroke, put an end
to this nightmare. The Jews were given their political
freedom, unconditionally, no questions asked, no bap¬
tism required for admission to European civilization;
and the young Jews of Bayonne, in a symbolic act,
stormed out of the ghetto, • attacked the cathedral (it
still bears the traces), and triumphantly named the ghetto
Quartier Jean-Jacques Rousseau. True, freedom for Jews
did not last, but for a moment in Europe’s history, it
looked as though it might be possible for a Jew to live
the way he was, with no disguise or cheating. It was

152

Epilogue

perhaps this feeling that made Emanuel Frey say he
came to France “to enjoy the freedom promised by the
French.” For Junius it was too late, he had to go on,
dragging his brother with him. With all his enthusiasm
for the Revolution, and we have no reason to doubt it,
he could not equal Robespierre, the incorruptible, and
content himself with a scantily furnished room. Chained
to the lead ball of his past, he was unable to rid him¬
self of his second nature. All he could do was add one
more to his roles and impress people with glamor and
money, only to perish in the end as a speculator and char¬
latan, And therein lies his tragedy.

It would be idle to lose oneself in a guessing game as to
v^hat could have become of Frank and Frey in the twen¬
tieth century. Maybe another Emin Pasha, alias Isaac
Schnitzer from Upper Silesia, the well-known explorer
and champion of German colonialism in Africa, who was
killed by slave traders; maybe another Trebitsch-Lincoln,
alias Abraham Schwarz, Hungarian born, baptized mem¬
ber of the House of Commons, British spy, press-secre¬
tary to Wolfgang Kapp (leader of the German nationalis¬
tic putsch, March 1920), Tibetan monk, and Japanese
agent; maybe even a naturalized U.S. Secretary of State—
there will always be finaglers making history. Besides, the
flight from the ghetto has changed by now into a flight
back to ghetto mentality by Chabad and other neo-
Hassidic groups with their weird, guru-like appeal to
American intellectuals, aided and abetted by the senti¬
mental writings of Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel.

Never mind, in their time Frank and Frey had to become
what they were. Today they would not have to. And this
thought somehow reconciles us with them and brings them

153

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

closer to being understood by Jews and non-Jews alike.
For they were Jews, and their revolt against their fate
and against the world was bound to fail, no matter what
they did or did not do.

154

The Memories of
Moses Forges about
the Frankist Court
in Offenbach

The writer of the following notes was the second of the
three sons of Gabriel Forges of Prague: David (1770-
1845), Moses (1781-1870) and Leopold (1785-1869), He
. apparently wrote the ^‘Memories” during the last years of
his life. I have tried to preserve the somewhat awkward
style of the German original. My own comments are in
square brackets. A. M.

I was born on December 22, 1781. My father Morenu Raw
[Hebrew honorary title meaning our teacher, master] Gabriel
Forges, a very learned man in Jewish knowledge. A virtuous,
righteous man. He was no stranger to the Christian sciences,
little known to Jewish scholars at the time. He was a good-
natured, fine man who never punished his children physically.
My mother was a good-hearted woman who minded the busi¬
ness, the family’s livelihood. Father did not pay much attention
to his business. He studied and gave lectures. The business was
a manufacture of Rossoli [a spiced Italian liqueur] and sale of
spirits. As it was the custom at the time, I was instructed in
Hebrew and Bible translation. From the age of seven I attended
the Jewish-German school until I was eleven. Because of my
lively disposition, I was not very conscientious about going to
school. Instead, I spent my time bathing in the Moldau river
in summer, playing on the ice in winter. After leaving school I
wanted to study, but my brother, then a student of philosophy,
was against it and prevailed upon my parents to refuse. So I was
left without occupation or education. The kindness of my
mother enabled me to buy some books of Lessing, Mendelssohn
and Schiller, but also of Cramer, Spies, and the like [writers of

155

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

popular adventure stories], in addition to some works on history
and geography, and I owe my little erudition to this self-instruc¬
tion.

When I was past 14, my beloved father called me into his
room and asked me whether I believed that the Torah, as re¬
vealed to us, contained all there was to know for our spiri¬
tual welfare and bliss here and yonder. I had been a faithful
Jew up to that time, although I had some doubts and scruples.
He said solemnly: “There exists, next to the Torah, a holy
book, the Zohar, which reveals to us the mysteries that are only
hinted at in the Torah; it summons us to spiritual perfection
and shows us how to achieve it. There are many fine men
devoted to the new teaching, with salvation from spiritual and
political oppression being their purpose, their aim. God has
shown himself in recent as well as in earlier times. You, my
son, shall be instructed in it. Mister Noe Kassowitz, one of
ours, will be your teacher.” Shedding tears, I kissed my father s
hand and left as if intoxicated, feeling elated at belonging to a
higher, nobler class of men.

There is no need to go into detail about the instruction by 1C.
The important thing is that he told me of a messenger of God
by the name of Jacob Frank, also known as the Czenstochover,
Polish by birth, who, after having spent some time in Turkey,
revealed himself as the Messiah, gathering around himself
many renowned Jewish scholars who believed in him and
adored and worshipped him. He acquired a huge following,
which he was able to captivate by prophesying and promising
a spiritual and physical salvation and especially life eternal.
The authorities, having learned thereof, sentenced him to be
confined to a fortress, and he spent quite some time in the
fortress of Czenstochau. Released at last, he converted to Chris¬
tianity, his family and most of his followers with him, in order
to liberate the Sh'ekhina (the holy ghost) from Roman bondage.
Some time later he appeared with pomp and circumstance
under the name of Baron Frank in Prossnitz, Moravia, his own
bodyguards surrounding him on his promenades. It is well
known that Emperor Joseph II visited him there. From Prossnitz
he went to Offenbach where he moved into a house of his own.

156

Memories of Moses Porges

with a great number of followers, mostly Poles. Conversion
to a different religion is an important step, with lasting influence
for the life of the individual concerned. Taken out of convic¬
tion, this step should be regarded as respectable; taken out of
the delusion of a passion which can be only satisfied this way,
it must end in misfortune and bitter regret, once the passion
is gone and replaced by calm reasoning. After his death his
daughter, named Gevira [Hebrew for power], assumed the
leadership of the believers; she was no longer young and had
her two brothers, Roch and Joseph, at her side.

These revelations made an enormous impression upon me,
a lively, truth-seeking youngster. I was seized by a strong long¬
ing for the holy encampment in Offenbach; I found no peace
and had no other thought but to go there. But how manage it
with ho money, my good father being unable to give me any?
During the general levy of 1798, when the young men were
tdken out of their beds at night, I went into hiding with friends
(Salom. Brandeis); a few weeks later it was decided that, in
order to escape the danger of being drafted, I was to go to
Germany. As this could not be done legally, I was taken by a
Teplitz merchant, called Katz, who waited for me at the Stratov
gate, to an old Jew in Soboten. He guided me over the moun¬
tains into Saxonia, for two florins, one specie-thaler, which I
gladly paid.

There I was on the top of the Geiersberg, a youth of 17, all
alone; after having been used to living in the company of loving
parents, brothers and sisters, nursed by a tender motherly hand,
there I was in the forest all abandoned. I cried, but the thought
of the goal of my journey, Offenbach, comforted me. Could
it be that the sufferings and privations that awaited me had only
to test my faith in the new teaching? I had received from
my family 60 florins in gold and silver and some three florins
small change. In the zeal of my faith, I took a vow to cover the
trip to Offenbach with these three florins, even if I should go
hungry and begging, in order to bring the 60 florins as an offer¬
ing to the divine lady.

Firm in purpose, I started out and arrived towards evening
at Fuerstenau, a Saxonian village. After a frugal meal at the
inn, they prepared for me a straw pallet on which I lay down

157

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

and, tired out, soon fell asleep. About midnight a big noise
awakened me and a man—in my imagination of giant size-
entered the inn, a huge pack on his back and a mighty stave in
his hand. He was followed by another like him and so on until
the room was packed full. I was scared to death. An hour later,
after some beer and brandy, they left, and I was told that they

were smugglers. . r ,,

In the morning I continued my journey, spent the following
night in another village, and arrived in Dresden at noon.
Immediately upon entering the town I went through something
unpleasant and offensive. I had to pay the Jew toll. For the
pleasure of being a Jew, you had to pay a tax almost all over
Germany, just like for cattle. Searching my knapsack the cus¬
toms man declared my nightcap to be new and unused, and in
addition to the toll, I had to pay a penalty for not having de¬
clared it; this exhausted the little cash I had on me. I was
directed to a Mister Jonathan Eibenschuetz, one of ours. This
was a nice young man, but almost deaf and stammering, hard
to understand. [This could not have been the rabbi mentioned
earlier in this book, who died in 1764, nor his son Jonas who
was no longer a young man at the time; possibly a younger,
otherwise unknown member of the same family.] He read the
letter and greeted me kindly with kiss and handshake. He gave
me room and board during my stay in Dresden and procured
for me a Saxonian passport to get rid of the obnoxious Jew toll.
When 1 left Eibenschuetz, the good-hearted man gave me two

imperial thalers. u i

I left Dresden in the most beautiful spring weather and
Started out for Offenbach on foot, intoxicated and exalted at the
thought of the goal I was heading towards. At first everything
went well. Singing with joy, despite the heavy rucksack I was
carrying, I arrived in the evening at Meissen. After having
eaten, I slept on a layer of straw into the late morning. When
I got up, my feet were hurting, I could not walk nor put on
my shoes, a sorry situation, especially when you are in a hurry
to reach your goal. There was nothing to do but take the road
to Leipzig barefoot, on swollen, aching feet. 1 arrived there
three days later, having spent the two previous nights in Oschatz
and Wurzen. They did not let me pass through Leipzig, and a

158

Memories of Moses Forges

policeman led me around the town to the Weimar road. I
walked with great effort, tortured by pain and hunger and, at
last, lay down on the roadside, weak and disheartened.

An hour had passed when a coach approached from the
direction of Leipzig. I pulled myself together and seeing that
it was empty, I asked the coachman where he was going. “To
Weimar,” he said. “That’s where I am going. Would you not
take me with you?” He said yes. “What shall I pay you? I am
poor and cannot give you much.” “Get in, we will settle that
later.” I put my bag into the coach, got in and the wagon rolled
on. What a wonderful feeling, after all that pain, to sit in a
comfortable coach, looking forward to making more than 12
miles in this agreeable way! It was night when we arrived in
Weissenfels. The coachman went to a hotel. Two waiters with
lanterns in their hands came to help the newly arrived guests
out of the coach. When they noticed me, they said I belonged
to the inn, not here. My good coachman took me there and
promised to call for me in the morning. For supper I had a
slice of bread and a glass of beer. I slept on my straw bed
through the night without interruption and got up well re¬
freshed. I did not have to wait long for my transportation to
arrive. I shoved my bag into the coach, and on we went, all day
long, except for lunch and feeding time. The night was spent
in a village, the next morning we were on the way again. Shortly
before Weimar, at about 10 o’clock, the coachman asked me
to get out. I took my baggage and left hesitantly. How much
was he going to charge me? Frightfully I asked what I owed
him, and to my surprise, the good-hearted fellow demanded
only 20 Kreutzer, remarking he wanted only what he had to
lay out for me.

I passed through Weimar without stopping and reached
Gotha that evening, before reaching Erfurt. I put up at some inn
and ordered beer and bread. In the adjoining room there was
a table decked out for many people, looking very festive:
various meats, pies, fruit and other dishes. They celebrated a
child’s baptism. I had had no meat since Dresden and the smell
of the dishes attracted me. The lady of the house came out and
said, “I see he is a child of decent folks,” and put before me
a plate of roast, eggs, and pastry.

159

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

The following afternoon I reached the gate of Erfurt. There
was an Austrian garrison in town at the time. I was stopped
to pay the head tax, about 2 florins. No use arguing, not even
my offer to bypass the town was accepted. They confiscated my
luggage, but in the end the collector gave in to my request to
see the commander, and a soldier led me to him. He was not in,
but was with some baroness. I asked to be taken there and was
admitted. Asked what I wanted, I remonstrated with him,
saying how wrong it was to demand a toll of two florins from
a poor traveling craftsman. He said this was the law of the
land, but I answered: “The collector may talk that way, but
he^ an illustrious high official, will agree that this tax was im¬
posed on Jews engaged in trade and commerce, and not on
poor traveling artisans.” And more of the sort. The commander
hesitated, but the baroness said in French: “The young man is
right, it would be cruel to exact such an exhorbitant duty, and
intolerant at that.” So the commander gave me a certificate
exempting me from all such taxes.

The same evening I reached Eisenach and without further
adventure Hanau, where I arrived at noon. Hoping to make
Offenbach the same day, I accelerated my pace, in what mood
and excitement I cannot describe! The gathering of the believers
in Offenbach was called Makhane, encampment, after the en¬
campment of the children of Israel under Moses. And this
Makhane I was to join that same day.

It was already dark when I reached Offenbach, an open
town. It was raining. I asked for the Polish court and was told
it was on the other end of town. A stately mansion. Crying
with religious fervor at the thought of entering the holy house,
I ascended some steps and rang the bell. The door opened, a
young man in Turkish dress greeted me with embrace and kiss,
called me brother, and said I was expected. Several ma-aminim
[Hebrew for believers] assembled, among them an old man
looking very distinguished with his snow-white hair and col¬
onel’s uniform: his name was Czynski. He took me to his room
on the upper floor, assured me that he would assist me any time
with fatherly advice, and instructed me how to behave at my
forthcoming audience with the holy mother.

160

Memories of Moses Porges

I was then taken to a room where three long-bearded men
in Polish dress were sitting, deeply absorbed in heavy volumes.
I noticed, to my surprise, various emblems of the Catholic
church on the walls, a picture of the Gevira made up like the
holy virgin, portraits of several men, and all sorts of human
figures covered with Hebrew letters. On a board there were
the ten names I knew from the holiday prayers: Keter, Hokhma,
Bina, Gedula, Gevura, Tiferet, Nezach, Hod, Yessod, Malhut
[the ten Sephirot or divine emanations of the Cabbala: Crown,
Wisdom, Reason, Greatness, Strength, Beauty, Eternity, Splen¬
dor, Foundation, Kingdom], fused into the word Ejn-Sof [In¬
finite]. One of the three addressed me thus: “My son, the
Shekhina is in trouble, held captive by Edom and Ishmael
[Christianity and Islam]. Her children have to deliver her by
sharing in her trouble. As soon as three Sephirot unite in trinity,
salvation will come. Two of them have already appeared in
human form, we wait for the third one. Hail the man chosen
to unite with Tiferet [Eva Frank?], for he will bring forth the
savior of the world. As for you, serve well in order to be one
of the chosen.” Thereupon, I was given a scrap of paper show¬
ing the board with the ten names.

That same evening, many ma-aminim, old and young, came
to see me. The next day I was called to the Gevira. She lived
on the upper floor. A chambermaid received me in the entrance
hall where I had to wait a while. How moved I was, how my
heart was beating! At last the door opened and I entered the
room. I did not dare to look into the Gevira’s face, kneeled
down and kissed her feet, the way I had been ordered to do.
She said a few friendly words, had some praise for my father,
and approved of my decision to come there. On leaving, I put
the purse with the 60 florins in gold and silver on a table and
walked out backwards. The impression she made on me was
sublime and favorable. The lovely face expressed kindness,
mildness and gentleness, the eyes holy enthusiasm. She was no*
longer young but of lovely appearance. Hands and feet, charm¬
ing. As I was later to learn, I found favor in her eyes.

Afterwards I was taken to the guardroom where I met a
great number of young and old men in military dress and armed.

I was outfitted the same way and assigned quarters. My training

161

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

started the next day. The food was not bad and our duty was
to stand guard in the castle and all around on the walls. As
no attack or other disturbance occurred, it was very easy. The
detachment which was off duty assembled in the evening to
listen to lectures by the three elders. But only a few of us
understood anything except for the names of the Sephirot, of
Shabtai Melekh Mashiah [Sabbatai, King Messiah] and most
biblical figures. There was always talk of one called Malhut, but
nobody ever saw him.

On high order, 1 was assigned to the Liberia, a unit of young
men serving the lady and her brothers at table and during
their daily promenades. Also Sunday in church. We had our
own room. I had frequent opportunity to observe the lady and
her brothers at very close range. I received a hunter’s uniform
and, instead of a hat, a green leather cap with metal mountings.
I served frequently at table, standing behind the Gevira. The
meals were taken in a spacious room, with three of us as
attendants. We ate the leftovers. This extra food tasted good
indeed as the inhabitants of the castle and many who lived
outside got their food from the community kitchen, usually
soup with poor quality vegetables. On Sunday there was church
parade with those of us wearing uniforms participating.

My only contacts were with fellow believers. I was very fond
of the older men, among them some highly venerable ones
such as Wolowski, Dembitski, Matushewski, Czerwinski. The
younger ones, especially my roommates, although respectful
in their talk, were frivolous, as it is with young people. There
was, in general, a moral tone, but they did not take it too
seriously. Sexual intercourse or marriage was strictly forbidden.
One morning, it was announced that, according to a vision,
anyone desiring a female was to be given ten strokes with a
rod, and, lo and behold, almost all the young men submitted
to it. I have to remark on this occasion that such visions by the
lady or one of her brothers were announced almost daily; they
were afterwards written down in a book, and copies were made.
We young people were drilled by a Polish drill master; however,
all rifles and sabres were hidden away when the French entered
Offenbach in 1799.

In the summer of 1798 the three sons of Jonas Wehle came

162

Memories of Moses Porges

to Offenbach and with them my younger brother Leopold. The
Wehles were well educated young men, Abraham, Jontef, and
Ekiba by name; they were renamed Joseph, Ludwig, and Max.

My brother was renamed Karl Junior [in distinction to
the writer of the Memories who, as will be seen later, was called
Karl]. He was 14 years old, could not think for himself, and
was assigned to be a barber. In autumn of the same year, my
dear father arrived in the company of the brothers Jonas and
Aaron Baer Wehle. I was overwhelmed with joy to see my
beloved father. The three learned gentlemen were respectfully
received and next morning presented to the holy lady, deposit¬
ing sacrificial gifts at her feet. The Wehles gave gold, which
was acknowledged with pleasure; they were both quite rich. ^

My good father, not being so well-to-do, brought a piece of
carnbri'c linen, which was the cause of my beginning to weaken
in my faith, until I became convinced that everything here was
a j^windle with several hundred honest people being attracted
from hundreds of miles away, only to be exploited, impov¬
erished, and made miserable.

That year, Mr. Salomon Zerkowitz came to Offenbach also.

He used to be very rich and brought with him all that remained
of his wealth, which he was ordered to give up. His wealth
consisted of Austrian government securities which I took to
Frankfurt to be turned into cash by the old Rothschild. Zerko¬
witz was a fine, honest man and cried when forced to give up
his last belongings.

Next to the dining room there was the sanctuary with the
bed and clothing of the holy father (so they called Jacob Frank,
the father of the Gevira and her brothers). The room was dark,
the curtains drawn, and here the believers prayed, kneeling
at bedside in ardent prayer. The room was accessible all day. At
the entrance to the dining room some young, mostly beautiful
women in Amazon dress stood guard, armed with rifles and
sabres.

As I alluded to above, I was offended by a sarcastic remark
the holy Joseph made at the table in my presence about the in¬
expensive gift of my father. I realized that here the gift meant
more than the giver. From this time on, I became pensive and
started observing. First I suppressed the negative thoughts and

163

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

considered it a sin to doubt what so many distinguished and
learned men believed in. I went to the holy room to repent.
Yet, another event soon made me relapse. One of my room¬
mates, a young man from Dresden, Jonas Hofsinger, had been
drawing closer to me for some time and, after sounding me out,
confided in me that he did not agree with the things going on
here. Realizing, at last, that I would not betray him, he spoke
out freely: after long consideration and examination, he had
come to the conclusion that an unheard-of swindle was being
perpetrated here. The believers, having made great sacrifices,
could not allow themselves the thought that they had been
cheated, the more so as they had been deprived of all means
to return to their distant homes.

After frequent consultations we decided to escape. In view
of our lack of cash, Hofsinger suggested certain methods in¬
compatible with the honesty and good reputation of our family.
Instead I wrote to my brother. Dr. Forges, and told him of my
decision to leave Offenbach, asking him for an address in
Frankfurt where we could go and receive the means for our
journey. The answer did not fail to arrive; the family agreed
and indicated a Mr. Neustadtl in Frankfurt where we would
find money and a friendly reception. Now matters became
serious. I told my brother of our intentions and showed him the
letter of our brother; he immediately declared himself ready
to join me in every way. So we figured out how to leave. As a
Polish member of the community had recently been caught
and punished, we decided to flee early in the morning by way
of the garden. We often stood guard at night and I managed
to have the night watch assigned to myself and Hofsinger. The
few belongings we had were put into one pack.

The eve of our flight I was called by a parlormaid to the
Gevira. It was getting dark; entering the room, I was attacked
by her favorite dog, a greyhound, who knew me and never
before had barked at me. The unusual hour of the appointment
and the unusual behavior of the dog scared me—I thought we
had been discovered and betrayed, and fell on my knees. The
Gevira calmed the dog, saying: “What’s the matter with you
today, don’t you recognize our dear Karl?” and she continued
to me in Polish: “I have noticed that your uniform is worn out.

164

Memories of Moses Forges

You may go to Frankfurt tomorrow and order a new one.” She
asked me whether I had any other wishes. I was deeply moved
by such grace and benevolence and almost confessed every¬
thing. She let me kiss her hand and dismissed me. I left in tears,
because I adored and loved this woman; I was then 19 years
old.

At midnight I was relieved from my duty and went to sleep.
Up at 2:00 in the morning, we packed our clothing and under¬
wear into a blanket, takifig only what I had brought with me,
Hofsinger and my brother did the same. At 4:00 it was again
my and Hofsinger’s turn to stand guard. We took the package
with us and stored it in the hallway next to the quarters of the
holy Bernhard [?] and Joseph, when my brother came down the
stairs. We put our rifles into a corner and, our hearts beating
with great excitement, we made for the courtyard, every mo¬
ment in danger of being stopped by the coachmen or stableboys.
Ffom there into the garden and over the wooden fence into
the open.

We ran to the nearby forrest, reached Oberrad and at about
6:00, Frankfurt. We found Mr. Neustadtl before long; he re¬
ceived and treated us well, gave us shelter and handed us the
money he had received from our family. We bought some
clothing for me and my brother that day.

Next morning we set out by coach for Seeligenhof and
through the Spessart forest to Esselbach, where we spent the
night. Somewhat earlier we were almost robbed by several men
who came out of the forest. Our coachman stopped and pointed
fearfully to the men who had lined up across the road, when
we heard behind us the approaching sound of a postilion. The
men withdrew into the woods and we reached Esselbach in
company of the diligence. We had been advised from home to
go to Fuerth and wait there for further instructions. We made
the trip from Esselbach to Fuerth via Wuerzburg by foot.
Somewhere between Esselbach and Wuerzburg I suddenly was
overcome by a gnawing hunger and, too weak to go on, had
to lie down. Fortunately some passing peasant women gave me
a piece of bread. Later I was told by physicians that, had it not
been for that food, I would not have been able to rise and would
have perished.

165

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

In Fuerth, we put up at an inn. Hofsinger being destitute,
we supported him with the money we had received in Frank¬
furt. I have to add here that Hofsinger did a dishonest thing
the night before our escape. He got hold of the key to the chest
of Joseph Wehle and Johann Klarenberg [this is the same per¬
son: Joseph Wehle adopted, after his baptism, the name of
Johann Klarenberg] which was kept under his pillow, and took
the Book of Visions and a jacket with him. I took the book
from him lest he misuse it. He repeated this in Fuerth;
one night he took the book from under my pillow and never
showed up again. He sold it to a son-in-law of Zerkowitz who
happened to live m Fuerth, but the latter did not use it in a
detrimental way. [The interrogation of the three escapees by a
Fuerth rabbinical court is not mentioned here.]

We had letters of recommendation to several people in
Fuerth, among them Mr. Moses Gosdorf, one of the most prom¬
inent. He received us well and invited us to his table. We had
been instructed by our relatives to stay in Fuerth until receiving
order to continue our journey back home. We remained there
over Whitsuntide, when we were called to the police station
and told to leave Fuerth within 48 hours. This was done on
behalf of the head of the Jewish community, and Mr. Gosdorf
told me that we were expelled because I let myself be shaved
with a razor [which is forbidden by Jewish law]. We had to
leave Fuerth, no use arguing.. We went to a Nuremberg suburb,
Jews not being allowed to stay in town, and called for the letters
from home in Fuerth. At last we were directed to proceed,
which we did immediately. In Weilhaus, the last Bavarian bor¬
der town, I was handed a letter telling us not to cross into
Austria, as this would expose us to being recruited. Instead we
were to return to Bavaria; enclosed was a letter of recommenda¬
tion to a Mr. Engel.

I have to report here a certain incident which happened in
the Nuremberg suburb of Gerstenhof where we had a lunch
of beer, bread and butter. A guest, easily recognizable as Jew¬
ish, asked us whether we were Jews. Thereupon, he took to
abusing us, wishing us a misse meshine (an ignominious death)
because we were eating butter with the knife of a goy. I called
the innkeeper and told him that the Jew was insulting us for

166

Memories of Moses Forges

using his knife and asked him whether he did not keep things
clean; whereupon the innkeeper grabbed the Jew and threw
him out.

We took the road to Bayreuth and arrived there the next
forenoon. Mr. Engel, a portly, handsome man, received us in
a friendly manner and, after reading the letter, invited us to
stay with him. We were given two nicely furnished rooms and
the generous man gave us breakfast, lunch, and supper. He
expressed regret at not being able to serve us at his table, as he
was in mourning for his beautiful and beloved wife whom he
had loved dearly and over whose loss he was disconsolate.
We felt very good with Mr. Engel and the stay in Bayreuth was
quite pleasant. Mr. Engel, whom we seldom saw, summoned
us after four weeks and said that leisurely life and idleness
were not good for young men; he had therefore inquired with
a friend of his in Hamburg and found me a job which I was to
start immediately. Thanking him for his good intention, I said
I would have to get my parents’ permssion. Such did not arrive;
instead we were given some hope of an early return home.
When I informed Mr. Engel thereof, he told us to leave his
home since we had not accepted his well meant offer. He
promised us a letter of recommendation to his friend, Baron
N., proprietor of the Emet estate near Burgkundstadt, who
would receive us well.

We started out in the month of August, on a very warm day.
We passed Burgkundstadt at noon. Somewhat earlier I had
taken off my jacket and put it on my rucksack. In the pocket
there was a little purse with 40 florins. The road from Burg¬
kundstadt to Emet goes over a steep mountain. At the midpoint
I asked my brother Leopold who was walking behind me: “Is
the jacket there?” “No, you lost it.” This hit me like a thunder¬
clap. The money in the jacket was all we had. Unable to stand
on my feet, I threw myself down. Leopold ran downhill to
Burgkundstadt, asking everybody he met for information, with¬
out success. He passed the gate when somebody asked him
what he was looking for, and when he told him, he led him to a
tanner who had found the jacket. First he denied it, but upon
Leopold’s insistence and his telling him of our misfortune and
misery, he brought the jacket; the purse was in the pocket.

167

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

He had to give the finder a few florins. Who could describe my
delight at the sight of my brother running uphill and holding
thp iRcket high!

In the afternoon we reached Emet, a little hamlet. I went to
the castle with my letter and was shown to the garden where
I found two gentlemen, one well dressed and bemedaled, the
other in his houserobe. The latter asked me what I wanted. ‘T
have a letter for the baron.” He took it and broke the seal,
while the other man came closer and, looking into the letter,
asked: “Who is this writer who calls you dear friend?” “A
certain Mr. Engel.” “What, a Jew dares to call you friend?”
Somewhat embarrassed, the baron said: “This Engel is a friend
of Minister Hardenberg” and told me to come back the next
day. When I did, he reproached me for having given him the
letter in the presence of his brother, an imperial court coun¬
selor. He spoke in the Jewish idiom and continued: “My friend
Engel recommending you so well, I am going to admit you
here. You build a house, engage in commerce, and I will arrange
for a Jewish Bes-Hayim [house of life, a Hebrew euphemism
for graveyard] where you may bury yourself.” We felt all
abandoned in this miserable place. There were some poor
Jewish families there, among them a man from Bohemia who
took pity on us. We told him we were expecting mail which
would tell us when to come home, and he advised us to have
ourselves certified as destitute travelers and go begging in the
nearby Jewish communities. After some persuasion we agreed
to try it. Our adviser wrote down the places with Jewish com¬
munities, and we began our tour. An oppressive, shameful
feeling seized us at the first attempt. In . . . one had to look . . .
for the host [lacunae in the manuscript]. They are mostly cattle-
traders away from home during the week. One is received by
the lady of the house and given bread and soup in the evening,
a night’s lodging, and in the morning, soup again and a few
pennies. We were soon tired of it and gave it up.

At last a letter from home telling us to go to Bamberg and
present ourselves to the local Jewish elder, Mr. Abraham Neu-
zedlitz; enclosed was a letter of recommendation. We imme¬
diately were on our way; it was September, 1800. We were
approaching the theatre of war. The French had passed through

168

Memories of Moses Porges

Regensburg, the Austrians were in Bamberg. The villages we
passed were all occupied by Austrian soldiers. We wanted to
put up at some inn, but were refused; the same at the next.
When the third innkeeper, an old man, turned us down, we
told him of doing us wrong by abandoning us to the night and
bad weather. He hesitated a while and said we were French
spies, not believing our assuring him we were Austrians. But
when we told him we were Jews, he said: “So show me the ten
commandments.” We could not because we did not have any.
[Unintelligible. Maybe the phylacteries were meant.] Then he
brought out a loaf of bread and asked: “What is this called in
Hebrew?” And when we said lekhem, he was satisfied at last,
and we satisfied our hunger with lekhem, butter, and beer.
Next day at noon we arrived at Bamberg and immediately went
to Mr. Abraham Neuzedlitz to deliver our letter of recommen¬
dation. He read it and received us in a friendly way, inviting us
to^stay with him. Mr. Neuzedlitz was an old, simple man, all
Jewish in talk and dress, but also hospitable and charitable.
He invited us to his table on Saturdays and holidays; he was a
decent, pious man. Coming home from the synagogue on the
Day of Atonement, he asked us to go up with him to the roof
to mekadesh the levone, that is, to bless the moon with a prayer,
a thing we had never done before. We could hardly keep from
laughing, hearing him pray in ashkenasic Hebrew, and when
he started jumping and hopping at the Sholem Alekhem [peace
be with you; a prayer greeting the new moon] we could not
hold on anymore and burst into loud laughter. The good man
stopped dumbfounded and left, and next morning we were
told to get out of his house.

We received a letter from home telling us to go to Leipzig
where the fair was being held, and from there, if possible, home;
if not, to Frankfurt on the Oder where we had relatives. We
started early next morning for we wanted to be in Bayreuth
that night. An innkeeper, standing in front of his house, tried
to dissuade us from continuing, because a storm was approach¬
ing. We thanked him for his good advice, which we thought was
to make us put up at his inn, and moved on. An hour and a half
later the storm broke with great violence. It was pitch dark,
we lost our way and found ourselves in a forest where many

169

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

trees had been dug up. We fell into the holes up to our hips and
got all wet from the pelting rain above and the water below.

After somfe wandering back and forth, we saw a light in the
distance and hurried towards it. It turned out to be an inn, loud
with music. The proprietress met us in the entrance hall and
refused to accommodate us for lack of space; anyhow, we would
find no peace, a wedding being celebrated all night. She told
us to go on until we should reach the Fantasie, and there we
would have a quiet night.

The Fantasie is an amusement place near Bayreuth. We
found the host all alone, his family gone to town and no guests.
We were, as I said, soaking wet. I asked the host to heat the
stove, which he did, and ordered, for want of anything else,
bread, butter, and a glass of beer. Brother Leopold did not want
to eat and preferred to warm himself. Hardly had I taken a bite
when I heard a heavy clap. Turning around, I saw him on the
floor, unconscious. I asked the host to call a doctor, but he said
there was none nearby. We carried the unconscious lad to the
upper floor, undressed him, and had to cut open his boots. . . .

This is as far as the manuscript goes. The brothers made
it to Prague, apparently without any further difficulties.
Later they became pioneers of the industrialization of
Bohemia and were raised to peerage as Nobles of Forges
von Portheim.

170

On the Intimate Letters
about France

Avenel and Claretie attribute the Intimate Letters about
France to Junius Frey (see chapter 26 of this book), and Max
von Portheim lists the following item in his materials for a
bibliography on the Austrian Jews (Jiidisches Archiv, 1929,
Nr.. 8-9, p. 66): Frey, L, Vertraiite Briefe iiber Frankreich.
Berlin 1792-1793, 1. Band, pp. 21-23. Professor Scholem quot^
this listing, but does not know the book; he assumes that pageV
21-23 deal with Junius Frey {Zion, 1970, p. 167). As a matter
of fact, the book does not mention Frey. The pages indicated
contain a description of the Frankist court in Offenbach, ap¬
parently not by Frey, as the Frankists are considered to be
aristocratic Polish refugees, waiting only for an opportunity
to return home.

With the help of the librarian of the Berlin Staatsbibliothek,
I was able, after a long search, to locate a copy of the book
in the British Museum. It was easy now to locate other copies,
one of them, so to say, under my nose, in the Music Library
of the University of California at Berkeley, my place of resi¬
dence.

The full title of the book is Vertraute Briefe iiber Frank¬
reich. Auf einer Reise im Jahre 1792 geschricben. Erster Teil.
Berlin, bei Johann Friedrich Unger, 1792. The second part
appeared in 1793. The frontispiece corresponds to Avenel’s
description: Jacobin bonnet, etc. The editor’s preface is signed
by J. (not I.) Frey, and the anonymous author is assumed to be
the composer, writer, and orchestra conductor at the court of
Frederick the Great, Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1751-1814).
With the exception of the two above-mentioned French his¬
torians, no one ever refers to Frey as the author. Reichardt’s
authorship, on the other hand, has not been established defini-

171

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

tively. The following arguments speak for Reichardt: (1) he
actually was in France in the spring of 1792; (2) two of
Reichardt’s works have similar titles: Vertraute Briefe aus
Paris, 1802/3 and Vertraute Briefe geschrieben auf einer Reise
nach Wien, 1808/9; (3) A. Laquiante, the translator of the
abridged French version, Un Prussien en France en 1792.
Lettres intimes de J. F. Reichardt, as can be seen, names
Reichardt as the author and also believes that he was hiding
under the pen name J. Frey; (4) Reichardt frequently used pen
names such as Trahcier or J. F., and J. Frey could be an acro¬
nym of J(ohann) F(riedrich) Rei(chardt) [cf. Sieber, J. F.
Reichardt als Musikdsthetiker, p. 116]; (5) Reichardt occa¬
sionally defended himself against having anonymous works
attributed to him; in this case, however, he listed the book
among his works. Several arguments speak against Reichardt’s
authorship: (1) various biographers (e.g. Eitner, Schletterer)
do not mention the book among his works; (2) some works
attributed to him were not his, and he did not raise any objec¬
tions [Sieber, 115 f.]; (3) the first volume is not concerned with
music, but exclusively with political, military, and social mat¬
ters.

The arguments for Reichardt outweigh those against. Never¬
theless, there is reason to assume that Junius Frey had a hand
in writing, at least, the letters from Strasbourg. This assumption
is based on the following grounds (we are only concerned with
the first volume; the second was written in Paris between March
4 and April 2, 1792, hence before Frey arrived): Volume I
contains 22 letters, two of them from Frankfurt, dated January
6 and 10, and nine from Strasbourg, written between January
ISand January 31. The preface is dated “W., August 15, 1792”
and signed “J. Frey”; it reads:

A free German who made the journey to France solely
for the purpose of acquainting himself with the true con¬
dition of the important French problem [elsewhere it says:
to inform himself by all possible means of the French
people’s mood and opinion and the present political situa¬
tion of the country] wrote these letters to his most intimate
friend, leaving her at liberty to show parts to her closest
friends. ... As for himself, he will perhaps live a long time

172

Intimate Letters about France

away from his country and as the publication of the letters
does not inconvenience him in any way, he has nothing
against their being made public. . . However, the editor
asks anybody who, with the excerpts, may have learned
the author’s name, not to divulge it, lest he be compro¬
mised needlessly.

There is a contradiction here. Reichardt had no intention
of remaining in France; he returned to Prussia in April, 1792,
and fell temporarily into disgrace because of his republican
ideas. Frey, however, could say of himself that “he will perhaps
live a long time away from his country.” Reichardt and Frey
(or Schoenfeld, as his name was at the time) must have known
each other. Both belonged to the Goettinger circle, both were
friends and frequent house guests of Voss. Their chance meet¬
ing irt Strasbourg seems to have given them the idea of writing
the letters together, perhaps at the suggestion of Frey, who saw
here an excellent opportunity for sending his reports acroJs the
border (at the risk of misusing Reichardt’s trust?). ^

The relevant parts of pp. 21-23 from the Intimate Letters of January
10, 1792 (missing in the French edition) read as follows:

“One more word about Offenbach. We saw there many of that
strange sect whose patriarch was buried last year with royal pomp
and exotic ceremonies. They form a separate community, about a
thousand of them I was told, in part armed. The patriarch appar¬
ently is their leader and regent and provides them with all necessary
food and even many a thing of luxury and extravagance. All pay¬
ments are made in ready money which they receive frequently,
with none of them carrying on a trade. The most reasonable of the
many contradictory assumptions seems to be that these are some
wealthy families of Polish nobility who have left Poland on account
of the internal disorders of recent years. In order to wait undis¬
turbed for the time of their safe and profitable return to their
motherland, they have adopted the form of a religious sect. The
prince of Ysenburg is obviously quite satisfied with these people
spending considerable amounts of money in his country and grants
them all possible freedom so long as they do not commit any
excesses. That such a rapid increase of well-to-do, unproductive
elements also raises the food prices for the inhabitants—is the
latter’s concern. Let them cope with it as best they can!”

173

Bibliography

& Source References

The present book is based in part on research in the following
institutions:

Archives de France and Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France

British Museum, London, England

Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Oesterreichisches Staats-
archiv, Wiener Stadtbibliothek, Vienna, Austria

Staatsbibliothek (Preussischer Kulturbesitz) Berlin, Stadt- und
Universitaetsbibliothek, Frankfurt a.M., Hessische Landes- und Uni-
versitaetsbibliothek, Darmstadt, Stadtarchiv Offenbach, Federal Re¬
public of Germany

Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Merseburg, German Democratic Re¬
public

The libraries of the University of California, Berkeley, and
Stanford University, California.

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Mr. Karl Fried¬
rich von Frank (no relation to Jacob Frank), Schloss Senftenegg,
Austria, for kindly making accessible to him the wealth of his genea¬
logical collections. The reader is at liberty of skipping the following
references. A.M.

ABBREVIATIONS
AF — Archives de France

BH — Martin Buber, Origin and Meaning of Hassidism

BL - Mayer Balaban, On the History of the Frankist Movement
(Hebrew), 2 vols.

BS — the same, Studien und Quellen zur frankistischen Bewegung,
Livre dliommage a la memoire du Dr. Poznanski.

DG — Simon Dubnow, Geschichte des Chassidismus. 2 vols.

DH - the same. History of the Jews, 10 volumes (in 6).

174

Bibliography

GF — Heinrich Graetz, Frank und die Frankisten.

GH — the same. History of the Jews. 12 vols.

GS — Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.

GT — Gustav Trautenberger, Chronik der Landeshauptstadt Briinn.

HS — Heinrich Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat,

6 vols.

KF — Alexander Kraushaar, Frank i Frankisci Polscy, 2 vols.

LK — Leon Kahn, Les Juifs de Paris pendant la Revolution

LR — Leon Ruzicka, Die oesterreichischen Dichter judischer
Abstammung Moyses und David Dobruschka, Jiidische
Familienforschung, 1930, No. 3

MG— Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des
Judentums

P3 — Peter Beer, Geschichte, Lehren und Meinungen aller\bestan-
denen und noch bestehenden religiosen Sekten der Juden, 2
vols.

VZ — Vaclav Zacek, Zwei Beitrage zur Geschichte des Frankismus
in den bohmischen Liindern, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft fiir
Geschichte der Juden in der Czechoslowakischen Republik,
1938.

SOURCE REFERENCES

Page

1 Vossische Zeitung, 1794, No. 48.

8 trial papers: AF-W342/648.

9 childhood: KF I/19f.; all sayings of Frank are quoted
from KF.

14 Eibenschuetz, Wehle: VZ 395.

15 Khlyste: all references from Karl Grass, Die russischen
Sekten, vol. 1.

16 Pietism, Buddhism: Gaster, preface to Horodezky, Leaders of
Hassidism.

Christian Hassidism: Nigg, Des Pilgers Wiederkehr, 170f.

17 Maimon: Lebensgeschichte, chap. 18.

18 Nahman of Horodenko: DG 11/172.

175

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Page

all references to “Free Spirit” from Grundmann, Ketzerge-
schichte des Mittelaltcrs.

20 Maimonides: DH II(IV) 759f., Iir(V) 102; DG 11/206.

21 tsaddik of Lezaisk: DG ir/17f., 26.
tsaddik of Lublin: DG II/250f.
amulets: DG 1/87.

every aberration: BH 40.

22 anecdote reported by the Talmud: tractate Baba Mezia.

23 “Great Maggid”: DG 1/13If., 146f.
grandson of the Balshem: DG ll/65f.

Sadagora: DG II/230f., GS 349.

24 Buber: DG 1/310; Scholem, Martin Bubers Deutung des
Chassidismus, Jiidaica 1963, 198.

against its will: BH 22.

Elia of Vilna: DG I/I77f., 224f., II/U6f., 135.
murder: Histonshe Sin if ten, Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1929,
vol. I; cf. DG 11/308.
tsaddik of Ladi: DG II/89f.

25 Napoleonic war: DG 11/264.

Nahman of Bratslav: DG II/189f.

26 prominent Hassidim: Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, VII, IX.
Orzeszko: O Zydach i kwestji zydowskiej (On the Jews and the
Jewish Question), 1913 ed., 5, 38.

27 Vincenz, Na wysokiej poloninic, English translation by H. C.
Stevens: On the Higlv Uplands.

disputation: BS 57f., DG 1/117, 332f.; Das offizielle Protokoll
der Frankistischen Disputation in Lemberg (Balaban, Skizzcn
und Stiidien zur Geschichte der Juden in Polen.)

28 Kossakowski-Molivda: KF 1/130, 149, 182.
death of the Balshem: DG I/115f.

29 horses: BL 164.

Frankism in general: BL, DH IV (VII) 378ff.; GH X, KF, GS
chap. 8; Scholem, Le mouvement sabbataiste en Pologne,
Revue de VHistoire des Religions, 1953; the same. The Mes¬
sianic Idea in Judaism, 78ff.

30 Doenme: Scholem, Die krypto-judische Sekte der Doenme in
der Tlirkei, Numen, December 1960; KF I/47f.

31 cutthroat: GF 20.

35 miracles: BS 53, KF 1/69, Horodezky, Leaders of Hassidism, 8.

176

Source References

Page

36 Dzikever: Duker, Jewish Social Studies, 1953, 194.
heresies: DG I/196f.

37 according to the Talmud: tractates Sanhedrin, Makkot.

39 felix culpa: St. Paul, Romans 3.

bewildering sayings: tractates Nazir, Menahot, Temura.
rabbinical court: BL 107, 122f., GF 19.

40 sexual symbolism: Langer, Die Liebesmystik der Kahhala.

41 the religious rites: BS 53, GF 26f., KF 1/132.

42 the sexual element: Epstein, Sex Laws and Customs in Judaism.

43 Sabbath: Patai, The Jewish Goddess, 195, 247.

Shekhina: Talmud tractate Sota, DG 1/96.

Moses: Zohar I/21b-22a, III/180a.

44 tsaddik of Ladi: DG 11/111.
tsaddik of Berditchev: DG II/54f.

Jacob Joseph of Polnoy: DG 1/228.
vulgar Hassidism: DG II/96f.

45 Scholem: GS 317.

Rubashov-Shazar: On the Ruins of Frank's House (Hebrew).

46 Leisegang, Die Gnosis, chap. V, VII; Pulver, Vom Spielraum
gnostischer Mysterienpraxis, Eranos-Jahrhuch 1944; Epiphan-
ius, Panarion Contra Haereses, chap. 26

Flekeles: VZ 398.

cult of Mary: Patai, op. cit., chap. V, VI.
trinity: GF 15

47 Simon Magus: Iraeneus, Adversus Haereses, 1/27, 1-4.
Charlety, Histoire du Saint-Simonism, 267f.

Czynski, Les Juifs de la Pologne et de la Russie, Archives
Israelites, 1844, 780.
excommunication: BS 125f.

48 Uriel Acosta's Autobiography: A Specimen of Human Life,
1967 ed., 76.

even the Balshem: DG 1/116

49 disputation: BL 137f., KF I/70f.
theses: KF I/78f., 85f.

51 escape to Turkey: KF I/97f., GF 42.

52 pseudo-Isaiah: KF II, chap. 19.

55 ritual murder trials: Balaban, Hugo Grotius und die Ritual-
mordprozesse von Lublin, Festschrift fiir S. Dubnow, 87f.; BL

177

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Page

10If.; Stern, Die pcipstUchen Bullen iiber die Blutbeschuldigung.

58 disputation: BL 209f.

59 thesis VII: BS 45; Scholem, Le mouvement etc., op. cit., vol.
164/44f.

60 Dr. Usiel: BL 253f.

Mikulski: GF 53.

61 Galinski: VZ 40If.

65 an old Polish custom: Wielka Encyklopedja Powszechna, 1964,
vol. IV, (under Frank).

65 in 1492: Zeitschrift fiir kathoUsche Theologie, 1938, 155f,
some sources: Mieses, Polacy-Chrzescijanie pochodzenia
zydowskiego (Polish Christians of Jewish Descent), 2 vols.T
I/XX.

68 strange similarities: DG 11/197, 202f., 209f., 213.

Jewish devils: DG 207, KF 1/421.

70 Frankist officers: Jeske-Choinski, Neofici Polscy; Mieses, op.
cit., (passim).

71 Jewish officers: Rubin, 140 Jewish Marshals, Generals, and
Admirals.

Inquisition: KF I/183f.

74 emissaries: PB 330f.

75 cult of Eve: KF I/240f.

77 Henrietta, Marianna: KF I/249f., 11/310.

78 Maria Lactans: Reallexikon der deutschen Kunstgeschichte,
vol. III.

79 Prossnitzer: GF 66, GH X/348.

80 Sheindel Dobrushka: MG 1917, 205; Krauss, Festschrift fiir
A. Kaminka, 143f.; BL; Trapp, Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey,
Tagesbote, Bruenn, 16. I. 1928.

81 Eibenschuetz: HS 11/249, IV/317; KF 1/305; MG 1877, 23.
Salomon Dobrushka: Trapp, op. cit.; Notizenblatt der histor.-
statist. Section der mdhrisch-schlesischen Gesellschaft zur Be-
f or derung des Acker bans etc., 1871, II/9.

82 Frank had succeeded: VZ 393.

Bluemele Dobrushka: LR 287; Trapp, op. cit.

83 patent of nobility: Oesterreichisches Staats- und Verwaltungs-
archiv, Vienna.

85 Popper: HS IV/325; Krauss, Joachim Edier von Popper, 75f,
106f.

178

Source References
Page

Moses Dobrushka: De Luca, Das Gelehrte Oesterreich, des
ersten Bandes zweytes Stuck, 105f.; Wurzbach, Biographisches
Lexikon des Kaiserreiches Oesterreich, XXXI/150f.; Goedeke,
Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, IV/152,
VII/11; Giebisch-Gugitz, Bio-Bibliographisches Literaturlexi-
kon Oesterreichs, 369.

87 poems of the brothers Schoenfeld: Becker s Taschenbuch zum
geselligen Vergniigen, 1790 and later; Blumenlese der Musen,
1789-1790.

89 letters of Kretschmann, Gleim, Ramler: AF-T- 1524.

The Seven Penitent Psalms: ibid.

90 Asiatic Brothers: Katz, Jews and Freemasons, 26f.

91 coronation of Leopold: MG 1917, 206.

secret instructions: Kretschmann, Ehrengedachtnis der Herren
Franz Thomas und Emanuel von Schoenfeld, Becker’s Taschen¬
buch zum geselligen Vergniigen, 1799, 136f.; Lenotre, Le Baron
de Batz, 45.

93 war against Turkey: KF 11/12. )

the Chronicle reports: KF 11/41; VZ 392, 404. ^

Molitor: Katz, Zion, Jerusalem 1965, 204; Scholem, The Ca¬
reer of a Frankist, Zion 1970, 144.

94 on his own authority: KF 11/20; Mieses, op. cit., I/XXXVI.

95 Paul I: KF 11/36, 54f.

Alexander I: GF 78; GT V/31; Kraushaar, Obrazy i Wizerunki
historyczne (Historical Images and Sketches), 275; KF 11/237.
Frank’s health: KF 11/36.

Peter Beer: PB 11/324.

96 the waterman: Journal des Luxus und der Moden, Weimar,
February 1800.

tobacco monopoly: Krauss, Joachim Edier von Popper, 3If.
Koffiler: GT IV/163.

97 elixir: KF 11/84.

99 departure: KF II/90f.

Frank’s sons: KF 11/86, 92.

100 the work of my hands: Talmud tractate Sanhedrin.

Prague Frankists: VZ 358f.; Balaban, Zur Geschichte der
Familie Wehle, Zeitschrift fiir Geschichte der Juden in der
Tschechoslowakei, 1923, III/113f.

Gottlieb Wehle: Scholem, A Sabbataian Will from New York,
Miscellanies of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 1948.

179

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Page

101 Brandeis: Josephine Goldmark, Pioneers of the '48.

102 Hoenigsberg: MG 1877, 234.

Pawlowska: KF 11/242.

rabbinical court: MG 1877, ]8f, 232f.

103 Bukovina: Bidermann, Die Bukovina unter oesterr. Verwal-
tung, 7Of.

for the ceremonies: MG 1877, 192f.

104 Schenck-Rinck, Die Polen in Offenbach.
interpreter: GF 21.

107 Goethe: Arnsberg, Von PodoHen nach Offenbach, 9; Mieses,
op. cit., 11/210, 259.

108 Mickiewicz: Mieses, op. cit., II/119f.; Duker, Some cabbalistic
and frankist elements in Mickiewicz’ “Dziady,” Studies in
Polish Civilization, 1966, 213f.; Scheps, Adam Mickiewicz, ses
affinitites juives.

Casanova, Epistolario, 354f.

110 rumors: GF 38.

eyewitness: Schenck-Rinck, op. cit., 35.

Lubomirski: KF II/120f

111 stroke: KF 11/126.

funeral: GF 84; GT IV/194; Leonhard, A us unserer Zeit in
meinem Leben, I/29f.

112 Hofsinger: MG 1877, 238.

113 protests: Wielka Encyklopedja Powszechna,YV (under Frank),
appeal: Gelber, Aus zwei Jahrhunderten, 56f.; PB II/334f.

114 anonymous informer: VZ 404f.

115 Count Trautmannsdorf: Gelber, op. cit., 66f.

the Prussian government: Die Franksche Sekte zu Offenbach,
Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Hist. Abt. II, Merseburg, Rep. 81
Frankfurt VB No. 23.

118 Johann Georg Forsters Briefwechsel, 1829, II/111.

Prague Frankists: VZ 378f., 40.8f.

119 the following notice: Arnsberg, op. cit., 32, 50.

121 Courrier de Strasbourg, April-June 1792.

123 letters to Voss: AF-T-1524.

124 open letter: ibid.

125 Avenel, Anarcharsis Cloots, Vorateur du genre humain, II/2.

126 Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, 247f.
chased out of Berlin: LK 264.

180

Source References
Page

127 Frey’s son: AF-W342/648.

128 that same evening: Le Courrier de Gorsas, 11. 6. 1792.
inventory: AF-F7-4637.

Robespierre: AF, Pieces trouvees dans les papiers de
Robespierre.

Tuileries: AF-F7-4713.

129 citizenship: AF-T-1525.

130 Ruehl: Mathiez, LA Revolution et les Etrangers, 116.
adoptions: AF-F7-4637.

national estates: AF-F7-4713.

131 shipment of arms: Mathiez, op. cit., 118.

Turkey: Histoire veritable du wariage de Frangois Chabot
avec Leopoldine Frey, AF-F7-4637.

. captured vessels; loaned money: AF-W342/648.
at the trial: LK 263f.

Frey’s daughters: LR 287.

Diedrichsen: AF-W342/648.

135 within 24 hours: Histoire veritable, op. cit.

136 Leopoldine: AF-F7-4637.

Chabot: Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Legislature, II/294f.

137 at dagger point: letter to Robespierre, AF-W342/648.
my brother: Histoire veritable, op. cit.
housekeeper: AF-F7-4637.

she trembles: Chabot’s defense, ibid,
petition: AF-F7-4713.

Trenck: Annales Revohitionnaires, \9\4, 101 f.

138 deposition: AF-W342/648.

139 Wedekind: Avenel, op. cit., 11/202; AF-F7-4637.
notice: Annales de la Republique Frangaise, 4. 10. 1793.

140 Maria Theresa: Chabot’s defense, AF-F7-4637.

in the Jacobin club: Gazette Nationale, 1793, No. 63.
Wilhelm; Haussmann: AF-W342/648.

142 the storm broke: ibid.

143 the prosecutor: AF-F7-4713.

144 Compagnie des Indes: AF-F7-4637 and 4590; also Mathiez,
Un Proces de Corruption sous la Terreur.

Robespierre: AF, Pieces trouvees dans les papiers de Robes¬
pierre.

145 witnesses: AF-F7-4775; Moniteur Universel, 17. 11. 1793.

181

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

Page

in the course of 1793: AF-F7-4637 (Diedrichsen to Frey).
Chabot: AF-W342/648, F7-4637, and among letters found at
Robespierre’s.

146 tried to commit suicide: AF-W342/648.
act of accusation: ibid.

147 Topino-Lebrun: Revue d*Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise,
1875, 177.

judgement AF-W342/648.

Emanuel Frey: LK 264.

148 Leopoldine: AF-F7-4637.
last sign of life: AF-F7-4713.

family Chabot: Boland, Frangois Chabot, 339.

Sandoz-Rollin: GT IV/240.

marriage license: Information Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Merse¬
burg.

Bluemele: LR 287.

149 Robinet, Le Proces des Dantoniens, 185, 398.

Lenotre, Le baron de Batz, 45.

Scholem, Zion, op. cit., 175.

Kisch, Tales from Seven Ghettos, 41.

182

Index

Abelard, Pierre 133
Acosta, Uriel 48
Agnon, Shmuel Joseph 27
Alexander, I. 71, 95, 113, 119
Anski, Shlomo 27
Arnim, Bettina von 107, 118
Avenel, Georges 125f., 149
Balaban, Mayer 58, 66
Balshem, Israel 15ff., 21ff., 43f., 48
Battenberg-Mountbatten 71
Bedersi, Yedaya 86
Beer, Peter 95
Bellarmini, Roberto 59
Bin-Gorion, Mikha Joseph 27
Boccacio, Giovanni 78
Bodrtier, Johann Jakob 88
Boland, Vicomte de 149
Bolekhover, Baer 27, 59
Brandeis, Louis Dembitz 101
Buber, Martin 19ff., 27, 38
Buchner, Georg 150
Cagliostro, Alexander 108
Calvin, John 134
Cardozo, Benjamin N. 101
Carlebach, Shlomo 27
Casanova, Giacomo 108
Chabot, Francois 8, 125fT.
Chmielnitsky, Bogdan 13, 63, 75
Claretie, Jules 126, 149
Clemens XIII 55
Cloots, Anacharsis 125
Czynski, Jean 47
Dante Alighieri 78
Danton, Georges-Jacques 7f., 145f.
De Luca, Ignatz 85 f.

Dembowski (bishop) 49
Dembowski, Andreas 113
Dembowski, Jan 70
Desmoulins, Camille 7, 126
Diedrichsen, Johann Friedrich 131,
141, 145

Dobrushka, Bluemele 82, 148, also
Theresa Maria von Schoenfeld

Dobrushka, Carl 80f., 91
Dobrushka, David 82, 87, also
Emanuel von Schoenfeld, Eman¬
uel Frey

Dobrushka, Ester 82, also Leo¬
poldine Frey

Dobrushka, Moses 82ff., also Franz
Thomas von Schoenfeld, Junius
Frey

Dobrushka, Salomon 80f., 84f., 95
140

Dobrushka, Sheindel 80, 84
Dov Baer of Mesritsch 23
Duns-Scotus, John 86
Diischenes-Dusensy, Abraham 85
Dzikever, Eliezer 36
Eckhart, Master 18f., 42
Eckhoffen, Hans Carl and Hans
Heinrich 90

Eibensc^uetz, Jonas Wolf 80
Eibensd^uetz, Jonathan 14
Elia of Vilna 24
Elimelekh of Lezajsk 21
Emden, Jacob 80
Emin Pasha 153
Enfantin, Prosper 47
Flekeles, Elazar 46, 113, 118
Forster, Johann Georg 138
Fouquier-Tinville, Antoine 146
Francis of Assisi 23
Frank, Eva 34, 46, 10Iff.

Frank, Hanna 32, 46
Frank, Jacob, childhood 9fT., and
Balshem 15f., 28, in Turkey 28ff.,
in Poland 34ff., in Bruenn 79ff.,
in Offenbach 102ff.

Frank, Joseph 73, 117ff.

Frank, Rochus 73, 103, 117ff.
Franz II 91, 123
Frederick Wilhelm II 90, 123
Freud, Sigmund 44
Frey, Emanuel 7f., 82, 127ff., 146,
also David Dobrushka, Emanuel

183

THE MILITANT MESSIAH

von Schoenfeld
Frey, Joseph Franz 127, 146
Frey, Junius 7f., 82, 121ff., also
Moses Dobrushka, Franz Thom¬
as von Schoenfeld
Frey, Leopoldine 7, 126f., 136ff.,
also Ester Dobrushka
Friedmann, Israel 23f.
Furstenberg, Maria Josepha 86f.
Galinski 61, 95
Gessner, Salomon 85f.

Gleim, Johann Wilhelm 89
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 106, 118
Goldmark, Alice 101
Graetz, Heinrich 45, 66
Grotius, Hugo 58
Hassid, Yidl 14
Hauke, Maurice 71
Heine, Heinrich 87, 150
Herder, Johann Gottfried 88
Hitler, Adolf 12, 19
Hobbes, Thomas 134
Hoenigsberg, Israel 80ff., 96, 101
Hoenigsberg, Loew 102, 118
Hofsinger, Jonas 164
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 108
Hurwicz, Jacob Isaac 21
Issakhar (rabbi) 29, 31, 52
Isemburg (duke) 99, 105, 117
Jacob Joseph of Polnoy 44
Jakubowicz, Adalbert 71
Jakubowski, Joseph 70
Jakubowski, Peter 93
Jasinski, Jacob 70
Jesus Christ 13, 24, 13f., 50f., 58,
77, 111, 134

Jezioranski, Anthony and Jan 70
Joseph II 82, 91f., 97, 124, 132, 138,
142

Joss, Elke 85, also Wilhelmine von
Schoenfeld

Josselewicz, Berek 70
Jung, Carl Gustav 16

Kahn, Leon 149
Kant, Immanuel 134
Kemal Atatiirk 71
Kisch, Egon Erwin 150
Kleist, Ewald von 88
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 88,
129

Kohn, Abraham 24
Kossakowski-Molivda, Anton 27
Kretschmann, Karl Friedrich 89ff.,
149

Krysa, Leib 66, 70
Krysinski, Jan and Xavier 70
Landau, Samuel 119
Lavater, Johann Kaspar 88
Laveaux, Charles 12 If., 125, 129
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 124
Lenotre, G. 51, 149
Leopold II 7, 91, 126f., 138, 140
Lepeletier, Louis-Michel 128
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 152
Leti, Gregory 59
Levi Isaac of Berditchev 44
Lewinski, Jacob 70
Locke, John 134
Lubomirski, Martin 110
Luther, Martin 134
Maimon, Salomon 17
Maimonides, Moses 20f.

Majewski, Ignace 70
Malakh, Haim 14
Marat, Jean-Paul 128
Maria Theresa 61, 82, 94, 140
Marie Antoinette 91, 140
Marx, Karl 152
Mathiez, Albert 149
Matuszewicz, Alexander 70
Maupassant, Guy de 78
Mauthner, Fritz 101
Medici, Ferdinando, Juan, Vitale 65
Melanchthon, Philipp 134
Mendel of Kotsk 26
Mendelssohn, Moses 88, 152

184

Index

Mesmer, Franz 108
Mickiewicz, Adam 108
Mikulski (canonicus) 55, 58f.
Molitor, Joseph Franz 93
Moses 31, 41, 74, 133
Nahman of Bratslav 25, 68f.
Nahman of Horodenko 18
Napoleon Bonaparte 25, 70, 113,
116

Niemcewicz, Julian 26
Orzeszko, Eliza 26
Paul ! 95

Pawlikowska, Paulina 102
Perez, Jitzok Leibush 27, 69
Pliny the Elder 78
Pope,- Alexander 133
Popper, Joachim von 83f., 96, 151
Porges, David 155
Porges, Gabriel 155
Porges, Leopold 103, 155
Porges, Moses 103, lOOf., 155
Portheim, Max von 171
Prossnitzer, Loebel 79
Ramler, Karl Wilhelm 89
Rappaport, Haim 59
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich 171 f.
Robespierre, Maximilien 128, 135,
143f.

Robinet, J.-F. 149
Rothschild, Mayer Anschel 113,
151

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 123, 128,
143f.

Rubashov-Shazar, Salman 45
Ruehl, Philippe 130
Sabbatai, Zevi 13, 24, 30f., 40, 46,
51, 61, 73f., 79, 101
Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude 108
St. Epiphanius 46, 59
St. Jerome 42, 58
St. Paul 35, 39, 43f.

Sandoz-Rollin, Daniel Alfons 148
Schiller, Friedrich 89, 129

Schneider, Eulogius 124f.
Schoenfeld, Emanuel 82, also David
Dobrushka, Emanuel Frey
Schoenfeld, Franz Thomas 82M.,
93f., 112, also Moses Dobrushka,
Junius Frey

Schoenfeld, Wilhelmine 85, 113,
also Elke Joss

Scholem, Gershom 44, 58, 150
Schorr, Elisha 40
Schorr, Shlomo 66, 107
Schwabacher 101
Shneyer Salmen of Ladi 24f., 44
Simon Magus 47
Singer, Isaac Bashevis 153
Sokolow, Nahum 45
Soltyk (bishop) 57f., 60
Spinoza, Barukh 22, 134, 151
Stalin, Joseph 19, 146
Stolberg, Christian and Friedrich 88
Swedenborg, Emanuel 108
Szymanpwska, Celina 108
Szymanqwska, Maria 107
Szymanowski, Joseph 70, 108
Topino-Lebrun, Frangois 147
Trebitsch-Lincoln 153
Trenck, Frederick von der 138
Usiel, Abraham 59
Vincenz, Stanislaw 27
Voss, Johann Heinrich 89, 123f.,
129

Wedekind, Georg 139
Wehle, Aaron Baer 14, 100
Wehle, Gottlieb 100, 123
Wehle, Jonas lOOf., 118
Wieland, Christoph Martin 87f.,
129

Wiesel, Elie 153
Wilhelm, Johann Baptist 140
Wolowska, Kasimira 108
Wolowski, Franz and Michael 113
Zwingli, Ulrich 134

185

VERTRAUTE BRIEFE

UBER

FRANK REICH

AUF EIXER REISE
f’ \r r A H p. T 7 9 X ^ 5 c Jt A i >: n. p. .x.

ERSTER THEIL.

BERLIN,

nri JOHAWW PIMEDRir.K tTNCEA.

X 79 2.‘

Title page of the Intimate Letters About France

British Museum, London, and Mu¬
sic Library of the University of
California at Berkeley

PHILOSOPHIE

" sNp C I A L

JofiDlfiE

•^i^RUPLE FRANgOIS.

The proper study of flankind is Man.

Pope.

Pjr un Citoyen de la Section de la
Repuhlique Franfoise ^4 - devant du
Route.

A PA R I S.

Chez pROULLfe, Imprimeur-Llbraire ,
Qual des Augustins, 39.

1793 .

Title page of Junius Frey's Philosophie Sociale

(Biblotheque Nationale, Paris);

Lcopoldine Chabot, nee Frey

rHilABOT,

:y^^//’f'A (/fh‘ /f /ff

'•/ ff y^/ ^>V//VV//^V/ ‘///fZ. y/<r//f /.//f /ff

/.r /A'^rr/.'mi.'/'

Eva Frank’s house in Offenbach

during the visit of Tsar Alexander I, November 1813

Offenbach Stadtarchiv

Frank on the way to his prayer service
at right, on horseback, the “waterman’

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